EXODUS OF TIBETAN REFUGEES: TRAIL TO HELL

By Gopal Krishna Siwakoti, PhD
INHURED International-HimRights, Kathmandu, Nepal
International Summer College on Forced Migration
Wadham College, Oxford University, July 2003

The History

The Chinese People's Liberation Army launched its first ‘invasion’ into Tibet in 1949 which is now the autonomous region of the People’s Republic of China. In the years that followed the Dalai Lama's efforts to make peace with the Chinese leadership failed. On the night of March 17, 1959, the Dalai Lama took flight towards India, hoping to appeal to the international community to take action against Chinese ‘aggression’ in Tibet. On March 31, 1959, exhausted and seriously ill, the Dalai Lama crossed onto Indian soil. All hope for the survival of Tibet's 2,000 year old civilization lay in India with the Dalai Lama and 100,000 refugees living in India and Nepal.

Since the early 1980's, when China-Tibet opened to trade and tourism, a second exodus of Tibetan refugees have joined the Tibetan exile community in Nepal India and fleeing religious persecution, political repression, aggressive sinocization and cultural genocide. From 1986 to 1996 approximately 25,000 Tibetans have taken refuge in India increasing the exile population by more than 18%. 30% are children seeking placement in an exile school. Refugees must travel for days in waist-deep snow, there is nowhere to find shelter, food or water in the mountain passes; many suffer frostbite, injury, death.

In April 1996 the Chinese renewed their assault on Tibetan culture with an alarming vehemence in a "Strike Hard" anti-crime campaign which provides a new pretense for arresting "splittists", any Tibetan who challenges Chinese rule. The methods and language of the Cultural Revolution have returned in an aggressive campaign to vilify the Dalai Lama and to purge Buddhist monasteries of teachers, students and pilgrims. On August 11, 1996, the Katmandu Post quoted Xinhua, China's official news service; "hostile international forces were using ethnic and religious issues to 'westernize' and 'split' socialist countries". In August 1996 Reuters reported that China has posted armed patrols of paramilitary People's Armed Police contingents along the Tibetan border. The Chinese People's Daily newspaper reported that in 1994 border guards arrested 6,838 "illegal emigrants" attempting to escape from China and Tibet, a 23% increase from 1993. Every day that I was visiting the Khumbu region in November 1998,  I met Tibetans heading towards Kathmandu and Dharmashala, India If not for the risks of arrest, deportation and death in flight, the refugee influx would be much greater.

Deportation:

The numbers of Tibetan asylum seekers had decreased from apx.3,621 in 1994 to 2448 in 2002. Tibetan escapees report that deportees are conscripted into hard labor on the Kumbum-Lhasa railway or on road gangs, some are imprisoned, some are forcibly returned to their villages and denied permission to travel outside their districts. Former political prisoners and dissidents evading arrest are in nearly every case imprisoned and subjected to torture and prolonged solitary confinement. It is also dangerous for refugees to return; a Tibetan who has been to Nepal or India risks interrogation, harassment, work and travel restrictions.

The UNHCR mission has done an exemplary job securing safe passage of refugees from Nepal to India. However, incidents of repatriation, robbery and sexual assault by Nepali border patrols continue, which furthers the case for assigning a full time UNHCR protection officer to the region. The human rights community believes that given the changing hostile attitude towards Tibetan refugees in the recent days funding for Tibetan refugee assistance be maintained at the original level, as frequent visits to the Tibet-Nepal border by a UNHCR protection officer yield immediate results; refugees are released from police custody and allowed to continue to Kathmandu, where UNHCR operates a medical clinic, identification processing and temporary shelter.

31 May 2003 - 09:10 Eighteen Tibetan refugees who were detained after arriving in Nepal from Tibet have been deported in a joint operation by the Chinese and Nepalese authorities, according to eyewitness reports. In the past hour, the Tibetans, eight of them aged between 14 and 18, have been handed over to Chinese border guards at the main checkpoint between Tibet and Nepal at Friendship Bridge. The Tibetans had been forcibly removed from Hanuman Dhoka jail by Nepalese and Chinese police and officials at approximately 7.30 am (1:45 am GMT) this morning. Wangchug Tsering, representative of the Dalai Lama in Kathmandu, said: "The way the Chinese and Nepalese authorities have been working on this case together is unprecedented, and makes us fear for the future of Tibetans in Nepal. It indicates the level of Chinese influence in Nepal." The deportations were implemented despite strong international lobbying in support of the Tibetans behalf over the past few days and high-level interest in the case; the US State Department convened a meeting yesterday to express its concern direct to the Chinese ambassador in Washington.

More than 60 Tibetans gathered outside the Hanuman Dhoka main police headquarters and prison yesterday in an attempt to prevent the deportation of the Tibetan prisoners, but this morning Tibetans who arrived at the jail to continue the vigil for the refugees were cleared from the immediate area by police. The 18 Tibetans (14 males and four females) were loaded into a bus with a covered number-plate and driven away in the direction of the border with a Nepalese police escort. Wangchug Tsering said: "They were carried bodily out to the vehicles. My staff heard them crying and screaming, and appealing for the help of the Tibetan refugee centre and the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights."

The Tibetan deportees, who are from various areas of Tibet, were among a group of 21 who were detained by Nepalese police on 15 April after they had crossed the Nangpa la mountain pass in Solo Khumbu, a common escape route from Tibet. They had been on their way to the Tibetan Refugee

Reception Centre in Kathmandu, but instead were taken to the Dilli Bazaar jail in the centre of the city and charged with "illegal entry in the Kingdom of Nepal". Because they did not have the money to pay the fines imposed by the Department of Immigration, the Tibetans were given prison sentences ranging from seven to ten months. Three members of the group, a nine-year old girl and two six-year olds, a boy and a girl, were later released into the custody of the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights (UNHCR). The father of the six-year old boy is among the deportees.

The usual procedure for Tibetans arriving from Tibet into Nepal is for the refugees to be taken by police to the Immigration Department in Kathmandu and handed over to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). Since 1989 there has been an informal arrangement with the Nepalese government and the UNHCR that Nepal would allow the UNHCR to facilitate transit of new arrivals through Nepal to Tibetan exile communities in India.

Last year, a number of Tibetans who were arrested for similar reasons to the group of 18 – lacking valid residence or travel papers - had their fines paid by non-governmental organisations and private individuals in order to secure their release. But the deportations today set a new precedent, and indicate the harder line being taken towards Tibetan refugees by the Nepalese government.

Chinese Embassy officials in Kathmandu appear to have either paid the fines of the Tibetans or had them waived by the Nepalese Home Ministry in order to secure their release into Chinese custody. On Thursday (29 May), Tibetan staff from the government in exile went to Dilli Bazaar jail with the specific purpose of paying the fine for the Tibetan detainees and securing their release. According to the Office of Tibet in Nepal, an official from the Chinese Embassy arrived at the prison the same day, apparently with a release order from the Department of Immigration. The detainees were transferred to the main police headquarters, Hanuman Dhoka, that night, and UNHCR representatives and others were refused access. Prison transfers or similar police operations would not normally be carried out on a Saturday, which is a holiday in Nepal.

At least eight of the prisoners were ill, with three being described by visitors to the prison who attempted to gain access as being "in a serious condition", suffering probably from gastro-intestinal problems. One of the Tibetans was so debilitated that he could not even walk properly, according to the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy in Dharamsala, India. A doctor sent by the UNHCR was denied access to the Tibetans yesterday.

Sexual  Assault:

Human rights defenders, welfare officers and medical examiners and witnesses in Kathmandu believe that rape of Tibetan refugee women by Nepali border police is routine. In Nepal's strict caste system Tibetan women are without caste definition or protection, are often travelling without escort, and are thus extremely vulnerable to attack. Reception center nurses have examined many refugee women who were gang-raped at the border but were afraid of deportation and therefore did not press charges.

Children-at-Risk:

A great many Tibetan refugees are unaccompanied minors. Child refugees are seriously undernourished when they reach Kathmandu after weeks of walking in snow mountains, surviving on tsampa (ground barely) and melted snow. There are reports of child refugees abandoned in mountains passes, crippled by frostbite and exhaustion. European trekkers have found corpses of Tibetan refugees lying in mountain trails, victims of exposure and starvation. During the winter of 1996-97 several children died of exposure just after crossing into Nepal.

Amnesty International and Asia Watch have reported an increase in the detention and torture of juvenile political prisoners in Tibet since 1994. In August 1996, two boys aged 13 and 14 from eastern Tibet described serving four months in jail in 1994 for taking part in a pro-Dalai Lama demonstration in the Kongpo region.

Resettlement:

Today there are 54 Tibetan settlements throughout India, Bhutan and Nepal, 26 agricultural, 17 agro-industrial and 11 handicraft-based. The  Tibetan refugee population has grown to approximately 121,143. According to the recent census 69,426 Tibetan refugees live in settlements, another 51,715 live in scattered communities across the Indian subcontinent. The Dalai Lama's Central Tibetan Relief Committee, created in 1960, works with the Ministry of Labor and Rehabilitation of the Government of India and various voluntary organizations to provide assistance to poor, handicapped, unsettled Tibetan refugees.

The Tibetan settlements are a stellar example of refugee self-help; with extremely limited resources, coping with the trauma of loss of nation and family, adjusting to a vastly different cultures and climates in through widely varied geographical zones in Nepal and India, the refugees cleared jungles, started businesses, created farms, homes, schools and monasteries. In 43 years the Tibetan settlements have grown from primitive campsites into unified, economically self-sufficient communities. Refugees often suffer abnormally high rates of suicide, drug abuse, crime and prostitution, thus the achievements of the Tibetan refugees in India are remarkable. Literacy is 96% among the generation born in exile. There are six hospitals in operation, 60 Public Health centers and 36 clinics offering traditional Tibetan medicine. The Tibetans are deeply grateful to their Indian hosts, at a 1993 conference in New Delhi the Dalai Lama said "India has been the saviour our nation".

Although the Tibetans have achieved an impressive measure of self-sufficiency, Tibetans in India and Nepal are still refugees, live at subsistence levels in remote communities with no tax base, holding together in a fragile diaspora. A recent study conducted by a team of Indian sociologists put the average annual income of a Tibetan in India at apx. USD $150, whereas the average annual income for an Indian is USD $350. The largest aid donor remains the Government of India, but it does not recognize any Tibetan who arrived in India after 1963 as a refugee. Despite numerous appeals, the Tibetan refugee community has never received any funding from UNICEF or UNDP. To this day neither the United Nations, India, nor any sovereign state recognizes the legitimacy of the Dalai Lama's Tibetan Government in Exile. Few aid agencies have recognized how the he growing numbers of refugees newly escaped from Tibet has put an enormous strain on the exile communities resources. One of the singular achievements of the Dalai Lama is establishing a representative government among the Tibetan refugees. Chinese propaganda declares that he has "restored a feudal serfdom in exile" and is plotting to do the same in Tibet. To the contrary, On September 2, 1960, the Dalai Lama created a parliament-in-exile with judiciary, executive and legislative branches and a diverse group of official and independent news organizations. Members of the Assembly of Tibetan People's Deputies are elected by ballots cast in all the Tibetan settlements throughout the subcontinent. The Information Office in Dharamsala makes a special effort to educate new arrivals about Tibet's history, representative democracy and human rights.

Legal Instruments:

Both Nepal and India are not the  party to the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and neither to the 1967 Additional Protocol. Additionally, none of these countries have enacted any refugees law to govern the growing mass exodus. The protection refugees is based on the traditional hospitality and the deeply ingrained culture in the host community. The host governments are operating refugees response on ad-hoc basis thus there is no any legally binding instruments to guarantee the refugee protection. Thus, whenever there is any change in the governments or power equation in the host governments, the refugee community undergo a tremendous psychological pressure about their safety, security, human rights and the possibility for safe and dignified return.

Conclusion

The Dalai Lama's innumerable attempts to meet with Chinese leaders to negotiate a settlement have not been materialised. Beijing launches vociferous protest whenever the Dalai Lama meets with heads of state and goes to great length to block support for Tibetan exiles and refugees. China claims to have "liberated" Tibet from a "feudal serfdom", but after nearly four decades of Chinese Communist rule the Tibetans are hardly willing or contented Chinese subjects. China claims to have modernized Tibet, but the Tibetan exiles in India have access to both modern and traditional education in addition to freedom of expression and worship. With the support of democratic India, the Dalai Lama's exile community shows how successfully Tibetans have adapted to representative government and democratic, liberal values while retaining their Tibetan Buddhist traditions. Unless the Politburo is pressured to accept the Dalai Lama's offer to negotiate in good faith, and as long as Tibet remains in bondage to the People's Republic of China, Tibetans will continue their exodus to India.

In this context, there is a pressing need to continue aid to the UNHCR mission in Kathmandu and assign a full time protection officer to supervise the Tibet-Nepal border. Additionally, it is vita to secure official refugee status and identity cards for new arrivals and continue to provide financial and technical assistance to the refugees in exile until such time that the Tibetan refugees can return to their homeland without fear or persecution. Ensuring the health and safety of unaccompanied Tibetan minors entering Nepal and India is important along with special care to victims of torture.