Tibet Information Network - 29 November 1996

Summary:

Three Tibetan asylum seekers were shot and wounded on 18th November when Nepalese police opened fire on a group of 32 escapees shortly after they crossed the Tibetan border with Nepal. Several Tibetans, including a child, were injured after being beaten by police with lathis, or batons, during the incident, which took place at Lamabhagar, 100 km north-east of Kathmandu.

In an unrelated incident described as the most serious medical emergency in recent years involving Tibetan refugees, 43 Tibetan escapees arriving at Kathmandu in a single group on 16th November and following days are reported to be suffering from serious frostbite after being trapped by snowstorms on a 3,000 metre high pass during their escape attempt.

Tibetan exiles in Nepal are appealing for funds to help pay for medical treatment and rehabilitation for the frostbite victims, several of whom are sure to require amputations later this week.

Next week China's president Jiang Zemin visits Kathmandu and is likely to place the Nepalese government under increased pressure to curb Tibetan activity on its soil as well as to limit the admission of refugees.

Details:

The shooting incident on 18th November involved a group of 32 Tibetans, including nine children aged between 6 and 16, who had crossed a little known 3,000 metre-high Himalayan pass near Mount Panderma some 20 km away in an attempt to evade capture by the Chinese police.

Amongst the injured Tibetans were two who had head wounds, including one of the children, allegedly as a result of being beaten by Nepali police.

Police in the area, which is 30 km north of Charicot, say that they opened fire after the group defied an order to stop and began throwing stones at the police.

Tibetans in the group say that police stopped them and then immediately began beating them, including the children. The escapees, most of whom were Buddhist monks, say that some of the group then threw stones in an attempt to stop the beatings.

A Tibetan who was involved in rescuing the group from Lamabhagar alleged that police and government officials had not arranged for medical assistance to the wounded, apart from contacting Tibetan exiles in Kathmandu. "When the firing stopped the police did nothing. They did not give them treatment or arrange for medical assistance. Later they panicked and informed their superiors at the district office about 2 days walk away, from where the Superintendent contacted Kathmandu."

The group were kept under police escort until late on the night of Wednesday, 27th November, when they arrived in Kathmandu, ten days after the incident. The journey was done mostly by foot because local roads had been washed away by rains and because exile Tibetans did not have enough funds to charter a helicopter to bring down the wounded, although helicopters are regularly used for rescue work in Nepal.

The wounded had been given basic first aid and some pain-killers shortly after the incident by an American tourist who was trekking in the area, but received their first medical treatment at Bir hospital in Kathmandu yesterday, where they were said to be in a satisfactory condition. "It is amazing that after ten days without proper treatment the wounds are not deeply infected. They have been extremely lucky," said one of the medical staff who treated them.

One of the Tibetans, named Choenyi, age 20, was shot in the right hip, with the bullet exiting through the buttock and missing his femoral artery by two inches. Another of the wounded, 22 year old Samta, was shot through the knee cap and beaten on the head, and a third man, 25 year old Nyima, was shot in the thigh.

An official from the exile Tibetan government office in Kathmandu was contacted by police and was able to reach the area within a day and negotiate for the refugees to be bought to the capital, where they come under the auspices of the local office of the UNHCR, which is allowed to send Tibetan asylum seekers who reach Kathmandu on to India.

Amputations -

In another border area 200 km further west a large group of Tibetan asylum-seekers was given police assistance and allowed to proceed unhindered to Kathmandu last week. But over a third of the group are in a serious medical condition after being trapped by snowstorms during their escape from Tibet.

43 of the group, originally said to have consisted of 105 Tibetans but now thought to have numbered at least 111 in total, are suffering from severe frostbite, and at least 3 of them are certain to require limb amputations in the next few days. Other amputations are likely unless the patients' circulation recovers.

The group of 111 were mostly monks aged between 20 and 25 years, according to one source. Several hundred monks are reported to have been expelled from their monasteries in Tibet as part of a three month political education campaign being carried out there.

The group, one of the largest to have attempted to escape in a single group, got caught in a storm on the Larkya pass in Manaslu, 130 km north-west of Kathmandu, and some 55 km north of Anapurna. The escapees, who escaped through the border county of Kyidrong in western Tibet, had to walk through waist-deep snow before they reached police, who helped them to safety.

Articles in the Nepalese press on 17th November, noting that the group had been intercepted, featured demands by a local politician that the escapees be treated harshly, and described ten of the Tibetans as having made the journey on horseback. In fact the Tibetans on horseback were those with the worst wounds, who were carried down on animals provided by local officials and police at the request of the UNHCR, according to reports from Kathmandu.

Most of the group arrived to the Nepalese capital on 16th November after a ten day journey from the border, but on 27th November other serious frostbite victims from the same group were still arriving in the capital.

Amputations are expensive in Nepal and urgent attempts were being made late yesterday by Tibetan exiles in Kathmandu to raise emergency funds to provide medical treatment for the wounded. The cost of the hospital operations will be considerable, but false limbs, physiotherapy and months of aftercare for the amputees will be even more costly and are beyond the means of the exile community.

"We are alright until we have an emergency like this, but now the biggest problem is the money", said one exile yesterday. "Most of the 44 frostbite cases will need to be kept here for at least six months before they are able to go down to India. We don't have money to feed them for that long, or to provide treatment," said the exile, who did not want to be named.

Refugees sheltering at the reception centre run by Tibetan exiles on the outskirts of Kathmandu were severely beaten up in a night-time attack on the centre by locals on 31st October, apparently in a dispute over water supplies which left at least two Tibetans with suspected brain damage. The Tibetans did not fight back and the incident did not escalate, but as of yesterday the main suspect had still not been detained by Nepalese police.

Nepal is likely to come under more pressure to curtail Tibetan political activity and refugee entry into Nepal next week when Chinese President Jiang Zemin is due to visit to Kathmandu.

In January the newly appointed Chinese ambassador to Nepal, Zhuang Jiuhuan, warned that bilateral relations between the countries could be jeopardised by Tibetan refugees crossing the border from Tibet. "China strongly opposes its citizens' illegal exit from the country," he said, marking a shift in China's demands on Nepal, which have previously been focussed on the issue of exile political activities.

In June this year Nepal's Foreign Minister Prakash Chandra Lohani promised that Nepal would not do anything that might hurt China's national interests. On 16th November he assured a meeting of the German-Nepal Friendship Association in Cologne that he had given orders not to deport any Tibetan refugee.

China is to set up a China Study Centre in Nepal to exchange information on trade and policy issues to assist "deepening bilateral relations", according to a announcement by the Nepal-China Non-Governmental Cooperation Forum, which held its first meeting in Kathmandu on 30-31st October.