Tibet Information Network 12 August, 1995

The Chinese Government has asked the Nepalese authorities to step up their restrictions on Tibetan refugees in Nepal. The Chinese are reported to be increasing security on the Tibetan border to stop refugees fleeing, and the Nepalese have responded by deporting most recent Tibetan refugees.

"The Chinese want Nepal to restrict undesirable activities of Tibetans in Nepal," said Ganesh Prasad Bhattarai, the Director General of Nepal's Department of Immigration, according to Reuters news agency on 7th August.

Mr Bhattarai was leading the Nepal side in three days of talks with a seven member Chinese delegation led by General Zhang Guogang, Director-General of the Chinese Border Security Department, visiting Kathmandu to discuss "border security and other matters of mutual interest". Mr Bhattarai's involvement suggests that the talks focussed on immigration issues.

In the last two weeks the Chinese are reported by unofficial sources to have moved a border post or roving patrol to a posiiton high up the Nangpa-la, a 5,700 metre high pass in the Himalayas which most refugees use when they attempt to reach

Nepal.

In the last month Nepali police have been deporting some refugees to the Nangpa-la, which until now has been unguarded, instead of escorting them to the main border town of Dram [Nepali: Khasa, Chinese: Zhangmu], 150 km south west by road. Since April over 200 Tibetans have been forcefully repatriated by Nepalese officials via Dram.

- Tibetan Preferred Death to Repatriation, says Tourist -

Forced deportations have also been taking place in the far west of Nepal, and in early July Chinese security officials in Burang, western Tibet, wrote to their Nepali counterparts thanking them for their co-operation in repatriating a group of Tibetan refugees. The asylum seekers were described as "people who disturb the border business", according to a tourist who was shown the letter.

In one incident last month witnessed by western tourists a Tibetan refugee asked a doctor to help him commit suicide rather than face deportation to Chinese border guards.

The Tibetan was amongst a group of 11 refugees who were being marched under armed escort through Humla, in the far west of Nepal. On July 4th the deportation party encountered a group of Swiss tourists on a trek towards the Nepali-Tibetan border post at Yari, through which western trekking groups are occasionally allowed to travel on their way to Kailash, a famous mountain and pilgrimage site in Western Tibet.

The 11 Tibetans had escaped from Tibet in June but had been detained by Nepalese police at Basra, in Darchula district, 100 km south-west of the TIbet border post, and had been marching back under escort for seven days before they met the Swiss group.

"They were guarded by 7 Nepalese policemen with rifles, walking all the way," said Bruno Baumann, a well-known photographer and mountaineer from Munich who was leading the group, which included a medical doctor. "The refugees were very weak and they asked if we had a doctor and if he could see them - one or two had very bad diarrhoea and could hardly walk. They were very thin and they didn't look very healthy at all," said Mr Baumann.

Most of the refugees, seven of whom were monks from Kham, an former area of eastern Tibet now known as western Sichuan, had been travelling for four months before they crossed into Nepal, following a circuitous route of about 2,000 km across central Tibet in order to avoid detection.

"On the second day one of the refugees asked the doctor to give hm an injection which would kill him, as he believed that he would be shot by the Chinese," said Mr Baumann, who named the refugee as Sonam Gyatso, a 26 year old from Ngari. "He also tried to practice something like passive resistance, refusing to walk further than Yari, the last settlement in western Nepal before the border", said Mr Baumann. The protest was unsuccessful, and the eleven refugees were handed over without incident to Chinese police on the Humla-Karnali bridge on 7th July.

The trekking group asked the Nepalese officer if he would release the refugees in the no-man's land between the two border posts - a practice which some Nepali guards have followed in some areas to give deportees a chance to escape - but a small squad of Chinese troops with automatic weapons had already been informed of the deportations and had travelled to the border below the Nara-la, 4,500 metres high, to collect them.

"We tried to think about what could we do, and in the end we took photos and tried to record details of their biographies," said the tourists.

The deportees were escorted by the Chinese squad to the road-head a kilometre inside Chinese territory, where they were loaded onto a truck. "This was when we saw the refugees for the last time," said Mr Baumann. "A monk signalled to me to come to him in the truck, and then gave me a badge with his identification from his monastery. To my friend he passed all the religious texts that he had hidden under his clothes," he added.

"They were too weak to resist, and they were much too weak to try to escape," said Mrs Brandenberg, another member of the Swiss trekking group. "They looked very sad, very hopeless," she commented.

The Nepalese policemen were also driven to Burang, the local military and administrative centre 25 km from the border, and returned the next day. "We were told that they are paid 1,000 yuan (about $200) each by the Chinese, and that as a reward the policemen are also offered a trip to Lake Manasarovar", said one of the trekking group. The sacred lake, 80 kms beyond Burang, is an important pilgrimage site for Hindus as well as for Buddhists.

- Earlier Repotts of Beatings and Imprisonment -

There are no accountsu of returned Tibetan deportees being killed by Chinese police and the refugees' fears that they would be shot are exaggerated. Imprisonment of two months or more and beatings are, however, frequent in such cases. Semi-official sources in Burang say that the 11 refugees deported on 7th July were handed over by the Chinese border guards to the Army Headquarters in Burang, where they were beaten by soldiers before being transported to Lhasa the following day.

In Lhasa they are likely to remain for some months in prison, according to a Tibetan who tried to escape to Nepal in November 1994 but only succeeded this month on his second attempn. "The Chinese arrested 13 of us in Dram, and we were detaoned and questioned there for seven days," said Dudul Dorje, a 46 year old nomad fromr Jyekundo in eastern Tibet, adding that they had been bhaten with electric batons by border police in Dram.

The nrisoners were then sent to Lhasa, where they were imprisoned for up to four months, during which they were questioned every day, mainly about their reasons for trying to le ve Tibet. "We were accused of being splittists and being followers of the Dalai clique," said Dudul Dorje, who says he was questioned up to three times a day, given electric shocks and beaten. The prisoners were released when the authorities finally accepted that their motive for leaving had been only to see the Dalai Lama.

Information about the treatment of deportees or escapees by the Chinese authorities is rare, since only a few manage to escape again. Some are released after only a few days, but others are sent on to larger prisons in Shigatse or Lhasa.

Those who have re-escaped allege that they were ill-treated by guards at the border town of Dram. Three youths from Damshung in Northern Tibet, caught trying to cross the border at Dram in March 1994, say they were detained and tortured in the prison there. "As soon as the interrogation started I was given electric shocks in my face and chest," said Nyima, who was then 19 yeas old. "The interrogator kicked me in my kidneys and I could hardly breathe for a while. They beat me in my face with their fists and interrogated me for a few hours." The three, who say that they were also made to stand barefoot in the snow as a punishment, later escaped from the prison after 10 days in custody and walked across the mountains to Nepal.

A Tibetan monk from Tashigompa, near Labrang in Gansu says that shots were fired at him by border guards when he and a group of refugees tried to cross into Nepal from south-east Tibet in May 1993. None of the escapees were hit, but after being handed over by Nepali guards to the Chinese, the men were sentenced by a military court to 2 months and 2 days imprisonment, which they served in a military prison in Lhasa. They were beaten or given electric shocks twice daily for the first five days, according to the former prisoner, who asked not to be named.

Nepalese police have opened fire on Tibetan refugees several times during attemtpts to detain or deport them, killing at least two. In January 1992 a 22 year old student from Lhasa was shot in the back and killed when he tried to run away from Nepali guards deporting him. In June 1993 a 20 year old monk from Lithang was shot dead and seven other refugees were injured when they tried to run away from Nepali police. In August 1994 a refugee had to have his leg amputated after being shot by a Nepali policeman.

Last month Nepali police opened fire on a Tibetan student who tried to escape while being escorted back to the border in Solo Khumbu, in eastern Nepal. The bullets missed him but he was severely beaten by police, according to an informed source in Nepal.

[Note: names of deportees available from TIN]

Names of Tibetans Deported from Humla, Western Nepal, 7th July 1995:

Gompo Gyaltsen, 45 years, monk from Miwa monastery, in Hongyuan county, Ngaba prefecture, Sichuan Choeku, 26 years Tsedrup, 25 years Rigpa, 24 years Gyathar, 44 years Oegyal, 25 years Wajar [ba-cor?], 25 years (all monks at Garthang [mgar thang] monastery in Kham Minyak, Ganze Prefecture, Sichuan) Urgyen Nyima, 20 years, layman from Amdo Dondrup, 32 years, layman from Amdo Dorje, 19 years, layman from Amdo Sonam Gyatso, 26 years, layman from Ngari

Names of Tibetans arrested in Dram during escape attempt November 1994, imprisoned for up to 4 months in Lhasa:

Nyima Tashi (from Dzado in Kham, c. 20 years) Karma (Chamdo, c. 20 years) Thupten (Nagchen, c. 18 years) Topgyal (Dzado, 26 years) Karma Gyurme (monk from Nagchu, c. 30 years) Urgyen Topgyal (Nagchu, 22 years) Sonam Gyurme (Derge, c. 26 years) Sangye Nyima (Chamdo, c. 26 years) Sonam (Lhasa, c. 30 years) Thupten Gyurme (Lhasa, c. 26 years) Tashi (Nagchu, c. 31 years) Konchog (monk from Drayap, age not known).