Nepal: Displaced Tibetans protest despite heavy-handed police

Nepal: Displaced Tibetans protest despite heavy-handed police
Irish Times[Saturday, March 14, 2009 17:47]
Nepali riot police were out in force on Tuesday, the 50th anniversary of Chinese occupation in Tibet, writes SIOFRA O'DONOVAN in Kathmandu


AT THE heart of the Tibetan enclave, Bouda, in Kathmandu, is one of the world’s largest stupas - a huge white dome with the Buddha’s eyes painted above it, serenely watching pilgrims prostrating and doing kora, circumambulation, around its base. In Nepal, this is a Mecca for Buddhists.

Since Sunday the Bouda stupa has been surrounded by Nepali riot police to prevent demonstrations on Tuesday, the 50th anniversary of Chinese occupation in Tibet.

On the day Tibetans were banned from moving through Kathmandu or access in or out of the Bouda area. Some 1,500 security personnel, plainclothes and in uniform, were deployed.

Keeping their promise to the Nepali government, which has been under heavy pressure from the Chinese government, the Tibetans confined themselves to a peaceful prayer ceremony on the morning. Later a demonstration prompted a few arrests, though they were subsequently released.

On Monday, however, 12 Tibetans were arrested in the Bouda area in the middle of the night, and have already been sentenced to three months imprisonment. The charges remain unclear.

On Tuesday morning a 36-year-old British woman was arrested in the Chinese consular area for releasing balloons into the compound. The area has been strictly out of bounds since Losar, the Tibetan new year, (25th-27th February) when some Tibetans raised their flag over the consulate, and sprayed “Free Tibet” on the walls.

According to a clerk in the Bouda Welfare Society, this is the first time in 50 years in exile in Nepal that demonstrations have been dealt with so heavy-handedly. That reality is linked by observers to the recent visit of assistant Chinese foreign minister Liu Jeiyi to Kathmandu after which Nepali police were instructed by the authorities to prohibit Tibetan demonstrations, gatherings and prayer ceremonies for Tibet. The envoy sought assurances from the Nepali PM, Pushpar Kamal Dal, that Tibetan independence forces would not use Nepali territory to conduct activities “aimed at sabotaging China”.

Twenty thousand Tibetans have settled in Nepal since the Chinese invasion in 1959 and estimates suggest between 2,500 and 3,000 Tibetans used to enter Nepal from Tibet each year after a perilous journey over the Himalayas. After last year’s protests, the numbers decreased to 500-600, according to Tibetan activist researchers in Kathmandu.

Crossing the border is increasingly dangerous. On September 30th, 2006, a 17-year-old Tibetan nun was shot dead by Chinese police on the Nangpa Pass, the main trading route between Tibet and Nepal.

“Nobody uses the Nangpa pass anymore, everyone goes through Dram by vehicle,” a Tibetan analyst based in Kathmandu says. “It is heavily patrolled now since the 2008 demonstrations. The price of a guide has increased three times.”

Since the coup by King Gyanendra in 2005, the situation for refugees in Nepal has been getting steadily worse. A close ally of Beijing’s directives on Tibetan issues, the since-deposed Gyanendra closed down the Tibetan refugee welfare office and the office of the Dalai Lama in Kathmandu, leaving thousands of Tibetan refugees without vital support and access to information needed for life in exile. China’s acute sensitivity over Tibet has been the hallmark of Nepal-China relations since then.

The Bhota Welfare Society was quietly registered by the Nepal home ministry in October 2005 and Kongbo Dondrup, a Nepalese citizen of Tibetan origin, became the first-elected chief of the Tibetan areas of Bhoda and Jorpathi in Kathmandu.

He understands the pressure the Maoist-led Nepali government is under from China. “The Chinese suspect there will be some big protests this year because of the 50th anniversary – they are afraid of infiltration,” Kongbo said last week, “but our protests are voluntary and non-violent.” He persuaded the Nepali authorities to allow a religious ceremony on March 10th.

On February 27th 29 monks and nuns were arrested and held for a week by Nepalese police. “They had come from the Mount Everest region to do some shopping for the new year,” says a local shopkeeper.

A supporter of the Free Tibet cause is arrested by the police in front of the Chinese Embassy Consular office in Kathmandu March 14, 2009. Tibetans and supporters of Free Tibet were marking the 50th anniversary of a failed Tibetan uprising that sent the Dalai Lama into exile. (REUTERS/Shruti Shrestha)
A supporter of the Free Tibet cause is arrested by the police in front of the Chinese Embassy Consular office in Kathmandu March 14, 2009. Tibetans and supporters of Free Tibet were marking the 50th anniversary of a failed Tibetan uprising that sent the Dalai Lama into exile. (REUTERS/Shruti Shrestha)
In the new climate of Chinese pressure, Tibetans without legal status in Kathmandu have to avoid travelling into the city centre, where they can be easily questioned and detained. Monks or nuns are at the most risk, since they are, according to the Chinese government, the closest allies of the “Dalai clique”.

Mostly, however, Tibetans consider their relations with Nepali people are very good. “They work well together. Only the official strategy creates difference. Nepal has a lot of minorities who are ethnically Tibetan,” Kongbo Dhondrup of the Bhota Welfare Society says.

This year’s Losar, the Tibetan new year, fell with a terrible silence, almost a year after China’s violent repression of the 2008 demonstrations across Tibet in which, according to the Tibetan government in exile, more than 200 Tibetans were killed. It requested that this year all celebrations be cancelled. Only religious ceremonies were to be observed, honouring those who were killed last year.

In Bouda’s 29 monasteries, on the eve of Losar, effigies were burned, a tradition that symbolises the purification of negative influences. The Tibetan Youth Congress, a political NGO that calls for independence, organised its own religious ceremony in Kathmandu: effigies of Chinese prime minister Wen Ja Bao and President Hu Jin Tao were burned. “We have seen this kind of religious ceremony for the first time,” says Thubten Shastri, and exiled Tibetan.

The Losar boycott spread across Tibet which, in its 50th year of Chinese occupation, is under lockdown and virtual martial law to control potential dissidents in the so-called motherland.

A monk from the Tibet Autonomous Region, now studying at Rinchen Ling monastery in Kathmandu, commented on the situation in Tibet: “Nowadays they try to forbid us to even think of the Dalai Lama, never mind to have a photo of him. In the monasteries, they have seized Sim cards from the monks. My parents are afraid to receive calls from me. Nobody is allowed write letters or make phone calls abroad.” Tibetan monasteries now have police stations, and political instruction is an integral part of monastic life.

“It’s the 21st century,” says a Tibetan reporter in Kathmandu.

“The Chinese cannot kill millions of Tibetans in a holocaust, though they have killed 1.2 million since 1949. But they believe they can brainwash religion out of the Tibetans, erase all memory of Dalai Lama – it’s only a matter of time for them. They say the Dalai Lama has invisible power, so they have to focus on controlling the minds of Tibetans.”