| |
Nepal bows to China's
demands
By Ramtanu Maitra
On
May 30, the Nepal government, which is now run virtually
from the Royal Palace, officially responded to China's
demands and handed over to the Chinese authorities 18
Tibetan refugees who had entered Nepal illegally from
Tibet. The refugees, who were in jail for holding an
anti-China protest in the streets of Kathmandu, were
taken in by Chinese embassy officials in Nepal.
Over the years since 1959, thousands of Tibetans
have left Tibet seeking asylum abroad, and Kathmandu had
routinely handed them over to the United Nations High
Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). These refugees would
then be relocated mainly to India under a program paid
for with a US$200,000 annual grant from the United
States. India is where the Dalai Lama, the spiritual
leader of one of the Buddhist sects of Tibet, lives and
runs religious schools.
The
incident
According to available reports, on April
17, the Nepali Immigration Department sentenced a group
of Tibetans to prison terms ranging between three and 10
months in lieu of fines totaling $1,713 which the group
members could not pay. Along with three young children,
they had entered Nepal headed to Nelen Khang, the
Tibetan refugee center in Kathmandu, and then to proceed
to India. The children were placed in UNHCR custody.
On May 29, after the Nepal Department of
Immigration asked UNHCR to return the children, staff
from Nelen Khang went to the immigration prison in Dilli
Bazaar to pay the fines and request release of the group
members into UNHCR custody. As had been longstanding
practice, the UNHCR would have then facilitated their
further passage to India.
Instead, the Nelen
Khang representatives found two Chinese embassy
officials at the immigration prison preparing paperwork
to have the Tibetans released into Chinese custody. The
Chinese officials had brought a van and were accompanied
by six Nepali police officers. Nelen Khang immediately
contacted UNHCR. UNHCR complained and the Chinese
officials left the immigration facility.
One day
later the refugees were handed over to the Chinese. The
handing over of the 18 Tibetans has also raised doubts
about another 29 Tibetans who had entered Nepal
illegally and are languishing in Nepali jail.
Fresh implications
The implications of
Nepal's latest move cannot be ignored. Handing over the
refugees to the Chinese authorities indicates that
Kathmandu has finally accepted Beijing's claims that the
Tibetans are Chinese citizens and, when they cross the
international boundary, must be handed over to China.
Behind this move of Nepal is the growing relationship
between India and China. It is assumed that the handing
over of the refugees to the Chinese officials could not
have occurred if India had not given Nepal the green
light. In other words, New Delhi has tacitly indicated
to Kathmandu that this is the way to go.
Also of
significance is the fact that Kathmandu has bucked the
powerful UNHCR, which was in charge of the Tibetan
refugees and has acted all along on behalf of the United
States. It is no secret that Washington would like to
keep the Tibetan issue alive and use it as leverage
against China whenever it is deemed necessary.
New palace policy?
Since the death of
King Birendra in a shootout inside the Royal Palace in
Kathmandu in May 2002, a violent movement has resurfaced
in Nepal. The rebels identify themselves as Maoists,
which suggests links to Beijing. China, however, denies
any ties to the group. It is widely acknowledged that
the Nepali Maoists have open contacts with the Indian
Naxalites in Bihar and Andhra Pradesh, and are inspired
by the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) movement in Peru.
The present king of Nepal, Gyanendra, has taken
a very strong position against the Maoists and has fully
deployed the Royal Nepal Army (RNA) to curb the menace.
King Gyanendra's policy has met the approval of both
India, one of its two major neighbors, and the US. US
Secretary of State Colin Powell was in Kathmandu last
year assuring Gyanendra of American military help.
Subsequently, Washington provided Kathmandu with M16
rifles and other small arms, and US military officials
are now in Nepal to provide the RNA with military
training. King Gyanendra was also in Beijing last year
and reports indicate that he was received well by the
Chinese authorities.
Despite the obvious
implications of these developments, the Nepal government
maintains that the handing over of the Tibetans is not a
shift in its policy toward "escaping Tibetans", and
Foreign Affairs Minister Narenda Bikram Shah says that
Kathmandu remains "sensitive" to them. But it is evident
from the reactions of various parties that Nepal is no
longer a safe haven for Tibetans seeking asylum from the
Chinese authorities.
Indian
compliance
India is not a signatory to the UN
Refugee Convention and does not have national
legislation regarding refugees. The UNHCR is present in
India, but the government permits the agency access only
to refugees living in urban centers and does not
formally recognize UNHCR grants of refugee status
(although it has provided "residential permits" to many
Afghans and Myanmese). India considers Tibetans and Sri
Lankans in camps to be prima facie refugees, but regards
most other groups as economic migrants. However, in
recent years, a number of Indian court rulings have
advanced the protection of refugees whom the government
had considered to be economic migrants.
India is
home to some 100,000 Tibetans, who followed the Dalai
Lama after his 1959 escape from Tibet following a failed
uprising against the Chinese rulers. It has become
evident to Indian authorities that the Tibetan refugees
are not economic migrants, and that those who have come
over to India over the years have no intention of going
back to Tibet.
One visit to Dharamsala, in the
hills of Himachal Pradesh in northern India, makes it
evident that the Tibetan refugees are in India to stay.
As their refugee status gives them privileges which are
not enjoyed by the local Indians, a strong resentment
against the Tibetans has developed among the locals over
the years. It is said that the Tibetans, who, as
"guests" cannot own any immovable property inside India,
are involved in bringing in illiterate goat herders from
Ladakh and paying them off to become illegal owners of
houses and lands. In fact, some three years ago, a riot
broke out against the prosperous carpetbagging Tibetans,
and the Dalai Lama felt it necessary to issue a
statement suggesting that if such hostilities erupt
again, he would move his flock down to southern India.
Recently, the Indian media reported that the
Tibetan refugees are illegally settling in the
northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh. The All
Arunachal Pradesh Students' Union (AAPSU) claims that
thousands of refugees, especially Tibetans, have settled
in Tawang and West Kameng districts illegally, and have
obtained Scheduled Tribes certificates - which de facto
makes them Indians - and trading licenses. A
fact-finding committee on refugees was constituted by
AAPSU after the state government, on a directive from
New Delhi, reportedly decided to grant Scheduled Tribes
status to Tibetan refugees of Shyo village of Tawang
district. According to the committee's reports, there
are 1,600 Tibetans, of which 152 are genuine
refugee-card holders, and interestingly, 181 of them
have managed to obtain Schedule Tribes certificates of
Arunachal Pradesh. Since India's northeastern states are
located in a sensitive area, the report of Tibetan
refugee settlement has irritated the authorities in New
Delhi.
Washington dismayed
Nepal's
handing over of the Tibetan refugees to Chinese
authorities came as a shock to the UNHCR, as well as to
a number of non-government organizations and the US.
Following the transfer of illegal refuges back to China,
the US embassy in Kathmandu issued a note of protest
"deploring" the incident. The US called on the Nepal
government to return to its former policy of giving the
UNHCR access to "persons of concern" and allowing
refugees from Tibet to transit Nepal.
"It is
outrageous that Nepal would even contemplate handing
Tibetans over, given the well-documented mistreatment of
Tibetans returned to China," Brad Adams, executive
director of the Asia Division of Human Rights Watch,
told the newspersons in New York. "Nepal has a clear
obligation to protect all Tibetans in Nepal from forced
return to China."
Needless to say, Human Rights
Watch supports the efforts of the UNHCR to insist that
Nepal honor its obligations under customary
international law to protect Tibetans from being
returned home where their lives or freedom would be
threatened. International refugee standards also protect
individuals with a well-founded fear of persecution from
being accessed by the government of their home country
without their consent. "Instead of protecting them, the
Nepali government put the refugees in harm's way," said
Adams. "It doesn't matter why the Tibetans left home,
but the very act of leaving puts them at risk of
persecution should they be returned. The Nepali
government has increased that danger dramatically, first
by disclosing their identities to Chinese officials, and
then by attempting to summarily deport them." Elsewhere,
particularly in the United Kingdom, Kathmandu's policy
shift has been perceived as capitulation under pressure
from China. It is not clear what, exactly, UK observers
point to as evidence of such pressure.
Tibetans as pawns
It is interesting
to note that going as far back as 2000, Nepali
authorities were quietly handing over Tibetan refugees
to the Chinese. They were doing this discreetly; those
refugees arrested right along the borders were sent
back. Those Tibetans who managed to avoid the border
dragnet and reach Kathmandu, Nepal's capital, and put up
protest demonstrations, were handed over to the UNHCR.
However, on May 30, for the first time, the Nepali
police arrested the demonstrators in Kathmandu and
called in Chinese authorities to take control of them.
Through this act, Kathmandu liberated itself
from a policy, run from Washington and London, that has
been in place for almost 44 years (since the Dalai Lama
left Tibet). Now, declassified Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) documents show that for much of the 1960s,
the CIA provided the Tibetan exile movement with $1.7
million a year for operations against China, including
an annual subsidy of $180,000 for the Dalai Lama. The
money for the Tibetans and the Dalai Lama was part of
the CIA's worldwide effort during the height of the Cold
War to undermine communist governments, particularly in
the Soviet Union and China.
In fact, the US
government committee that approved the Tibetan
operations also authorized the disastrous Bay of Pigs
invasion of Cuba. The documents, published in 1995 by
the State Department, document support of Tibetan
guerrillas in Nepal, a covert military training site in
Colorado, "Tibet Houses" established to promote Tibetan
causes in New York and Geneva, education for Tibetan
operatives at Cornell University and supplies for
reconnaissance teams.
According to Washington,
official support to the Tibetans against China came to a
halt in the 1970s. Beijing never accepted that claim.
Kathmandu's regular handing over of Tibetan refugees to
the UNHCR was strongly resented by Beijing as yet
another example of Washington's official promotion of
anti-China elements along China's borders.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
