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World Tibet Network Weekly Digest 8/11-8/17 1995
Contents
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1. Weekly Summary
2. China Admits to Nuclear Waste on Tibetan Plateau
3. Chinese Step Up Pressure on Nepal Deportations (TIN)
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1. Weekly Summary
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China admits that a former military nuclear weapons facility is the
location of a 20sq.m. dump for radioactive waste. The waste site is near the shores of Lake Kokonor.
Nepal continues to deport Tibetan refugees, who face an uncertain fate once handed over to Chinese authorities. European tourists in Western Nepal witness one such group. The refugees were under armed guard and in poor health.
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1. China Admits to Nuclear Waste on Tibetan Plateau
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Source: International Campaign for Tibet
WASHINGTON, D.C., August 8 (ICT)-- For the first time, China has admitted to the existence of
nuclear waste on the Tibetan plateau. An official Xinhua new report, published on July 19, said there is a "20 sq.m. dump for radioactive pollutants" in Haibei Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture near the shores of lake Kokonor, the largest lake on the Tibetan Plateau.
The report claimed that there military nuclear weapon facility which produced the waste had maintained an "excellent" safety record during its 30 years of operation, and that there had not been "any harm to the environment" and "no one at the base ever died of radiation."
The report did not give details as to how the nuclear waste was initially contained and how it is currently being maintained. It did say that the Chinese government spent a large amount of money from 1989 to 1993 to "strictly supervise the environmental conditions of the retired nuclear weapon base," according to You Deliang, spokesman for the China Nuclear Industry Corporation.
A 1993 report, "Nuclear Tibet," released by the International Campaign for Tibet documented reports by a local Tibetan doctor of abnormally high rates of diseases in the nearby towns of Reshui and Ganzihe. The doctor also treated the children of nomads who grazed their animals adjacent to the nuclear base, 7 of whom died of cancer over a 5 year period. The doctor was unable to pursue inquiries to determine the likelihood of a connection to the nuclear base.
[...]
Ironically, the nuclear weapons facility happened to be decommissioned in 1987, the year the Dalai Lama called upon China to make Tibet a nuclear free zone in the Five Point Peace Plan which the Dalai Lama announced in Washington D.C. Today, the base is the world's first retired research and production base for nuclear weapons, according the Xinhua report. The base was moved to sites in Sichuan Province, where it would be more protected from Soviet attack. Nuclear missiles remain stationed on the Tibetan plateau at least three sties - Delingha, Da Qaidam and Xiao Qaidam - west of Lake Kokonor.
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2. Chinese Step Up Pressure on Nepal Deportations (TIN)
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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.
[...]
"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.
[...]
"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.
[...]
- 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, d ring 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.
[...]
[Note: names of deportees available from TIN]
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[end of WTN Weekly Summary
