Published by: World Tibet Network News 97/05/20 24:00 GMT

Testimony by Maura Moynihan, Consultant to Refugees International, before

the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearing on Tibet on May 13, 1997

I thank the members for the honor of appearing before the Senate

Committee on Foreign Relations. I would like to express special

appreciation to you, Senator Helms, for receiving the Dalai Lama last

month in the committee room in the Capital. I would ask that the balance of

my statement be included in the record as if read.

In 1949 the Chinese People's Liberation Army launched its first

invasion into Tibet. In the years that followed the Dalai Lama's efforts to

make peace with the Chinese leadership failed. On the night of March 17,

1959, the Dalai Lama took flight towards India, hoping to appeal to the

international community to take action against Chinese aggression in

Tibet. On March 31, 1959, exhausted and seriously ill, the Dalai Lama

crossed onto Indian soil. Chairman Mao swiftly consolidated Chinese control

of Tibet. 1.2. million Tibetans were murdered, thousands were sent to labor

camps, over 6,000 monasteries, the repositories of centuries of scholarship

and culture, were looted and razed. All hope for the survival of Tibet's

2,000 year old civilization lay in India with the Dalai Lama and 100,000

refugees.

Since the early 1980's, when Tibet opened to trade and tourism, a

second exodus of Tibetan refugees have joined the Tibetan exile community

in India and Nepal, fleeing religious persecution, political repression,

aggressive sinocization and cultural genocide. From 1986 to 1996

approximately 25,000 Tibetans have taken refuge in India increasing the

exile population by more than 18%. About 44% of these new arrivals are

Buddhist monks and nuns. 30% are children seeking placement in an exile

school. The remainder are adult lay persons. Many die in flight; the

journey over the Himalayas is the longest and most perilous escape route on

earth. On foot the distance from Lhasa to the Nepal border takes a minimum

of one month, in favorable conditions. 80% of escapees are from Kham and

Amdo, Tibet's northern and eastern provinces, thus their journey takes an

additional three months. Refugees must travel for days in waist-deep snow,

there is nowhere to find shelter, food or water in the mountain passes;

many suffer frostbite, injury, death.

In April 1996 the Chinese renewed their assault on Tibetan culture

with an alarming vehemence in a "Strike Hard" anti-crime campaign which

provides a new pretense for arresting "splittists", any Tibetan who

challenges Chinese rule. The methods and language of the Cultural

Revolution have returned in an aggressive campaign to vilify His Holiness

the Dalai Lama and to purge Buddhist monasteries of teachers, students and

pilgrims. On August 11, 1996, the Katmandu Post quoted Xinhua, China's

official news service; "hostile international forces were using ethnic and

religious issues to 'westernize' and 'split' socialist countries". In

August 1996 Reuters reported that China has posted armed patrols of

paramilitary People's Armed Police contingents along the Tibetan border .

Chinese officials stated; "The anti-splittist situation is still grave and

the task of ensuring the stability of the borders and the region is still

very formidable." The unit will maintain combat readiness to "persist in

foiling plots and disruptive activities by the Dalai clique." The Chinese

People's Daily newspaper reported that in 1994 border guards arrested 6,838

"illegal emigrants" attempting to escape from China and Tibet, a 23%

increase from 1993. Every day that I was in Tibet I met Tibetans heading

towards the Nepal border. If not for the risks of arrest, deportation and

death in flight, the refugee influx would be much greater.

DEPORTATION

In 1995 US aid for the UNHCR mission for Tibetan refugees

transiting through Kathmandu was reduced from an annual $200,000 to

$100,000. The numbers of Tibetan asylum seekers had decreased from

apx.3,621 in 1994 to 2448 in 1995. However, the drop in refugee influx was

the result of forced repatriation, not improved conditions inside Tibet.

The American Ambassador Ms. Sandy Vogelsgang, the British and Australian

High Commissions and UNHCR raised the deportation issue at the highest

levels of the Nepali government. Ambassador Vogelsgang has continued to

assert that safe passage of Tibetan refugees is an important feature of the

US-Nepal relationship. Random repatriation continues at checkpoints along

the 900 km. Tibet-Nepal border, but there is no evidence that Nepali police

are rounding up large numbers of Tibetans, holding them in jails in

Katmandu for several days and then returning them to Chinese agents, as was

the case in 1995. Deportations became less aggressive when the UML, the

United Marxist-Leninist Party, lost power in late 1995 , but the communists

are a growing force in Nepal and are extremely hostile to Tibetan refugees.

Of especial concern is the rise of a Maoist insurgency modeled after the

Peruvian Shining Path, which recently burnt an effigy in front of the

United States Embassy in Katmandu.

Tibetan escapees report that deportees are conscripted into hard

labor on the Kumbum-Lhasa railway or on road gangs, some are imprisoned,

some are forcibly returned to their villages and denied permission to

travel outside their districts. Former political prisoners and dissidents

evading arrest are in nearly every case imprisoned and subjected to torture

and prolonged solitary confinement. It is also dangerous for refugees to

return; a Tibetan who has been to India risks interrogation, harassment,

work and travel restrictions.

The UNHCR mission has done an exemplary job securing safe passage

of refugees from Nepal to India. However, incidents of repatriation,

robbery and sexual assault by Nepali border patrols continue, which

furthers the case for assigning a full time UNHCR protection officer to the

region. A UNHCR official I spoke with urged that funding for Tibetan

refugee assistance be maintained at the original level, as frequent visits

to the Tibet-Nepal border by a UNHCR protection officer yield immediate

results; refugees are released from police custody and allowed to continue

to Kathmandu, where UNHCR operates a medical clinic, identification

processing and temporary shelter.

SEXUAL ASSAULT

Welfare officers and medical examiners in Kathmandu believe that

rape of Tibetan refugee women by Nepali border police is routine. Tibetan

women are easily preyed upon; their language is wholly different from

Nepali; their clothing, manners and features immediately mark them as

Tibetans. In Nepal's strict caste system Tibetan women are without caste

definition or protection, are often traveling without escort, and are thus

extremely vulnerable to attack. Reception center nurses have examined many

refugee women who were gang-raped at the border but were afraid of

deportation and therefore did not press charges. In 1995 a Buddhist nun

was gang-raped at the border, became pregnant and is now living in a slum

in Kathmandu with her infant son, too ashamed to seek assistance for

herself and her child. On the nights of December 15th and 16th, 1996, a 22

year old Tibetan woman was raped 12 times by a group of Nepali policeman in

uniform. The assaults were witnessed by several other refugees who were

threatened with deportation. That Nepali border guards have for years

robbed and violated Tibetan women with impunity furthers the case for

assigning a full-time protection officer to the region.

CHILDREN AT RISK

A great many Tibetan refugees are unaccompanied minors. Until they

are registered with UNHCR in Kathmandu these children risk illness,

abandonment, molestation. Child refugees are seriously undernourished when

they reach Kathmandu after weeks of walking in snow mountains, surviving on

tsampa (ground barely) and melted snow. I have heard numerous reports of

child refugees abandoned in mountains passes, crippled by frostbite and

exhaustion. European trekkers have found corpses of Tibetan refugees lying

in mountain trails, victims of exposure and starvation. During the winter

of 1996-97 several children died of exposure just after crossing into

Nepal.

In December 1995 a group of European trekkers discovered Tenzin

Gelek, age 6, of Lhasa, lying in a pass in the Solokhumbu region of Nepal.

Tenzin was suffering an acute case of frostbite in both feet and had been

abandoned by the guide who had been hired to take Tenzin to India. The

trekkers delivered Tenzin to Kundi Hospital in Solokhumbu, which notified

UNHCR. Tenzin was airlifted to Kathmandu where he had both feet amputated

up to the ankle. He spent five months recuperating in Kathmandu before

leaving for Dharamsala in early March 1996. Without emergency care

provided by the UNHCR clinic he would have died from gangrene.

Amnesty International and Asia Watch have reported an

increase in the detention and torture of juvenile political prisoners in

Tibet since 1994. In Katmandu, on Sept. 4, 1995, I interviewed two boys,

age 9 and age 12, who were arrested in Nepal on April 23, 1995, deported

into Chinese custody and detained in Songdu prison in Shigatse for one

month. The boys said that they were made to perform menial labor seven

days a week and were only fed two small bowls of barley a day. In August

1996, I interviewed two boys aged 13 and 14 from eastern Tibet. They

described serving four months in jail in 1994 for taking part in a

pro-Dalai Lama demonstration in the Kongpo region. They were beaten and

sentenced to hard labor with several other juvenile prisoners of

conscience.

HEALTH

Tibetan refugees are malnourished, exhausted and often traumatized

by the time they reach Kathmandu. Descending from the Tibetan plateau,

these refugees have no immunities to protect them from dysentery,

tuberculosis, scabies, worms, typhoid, cholera that are rampant in India

and Nepal. New arrivals receive BCG, polio and TB vaccinations in Nepal

and Dharamsala, but the dispensaries often run out of supplies.

Tuberculosis is widespread in the Tibetan refugee community; over 35,000

third line TB cases have been identified. A significant number of

refugees are survivors of torture. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty

International and Physicians for Social Responsibility have documented the

following torture techniques routinely used on Tibetan political prisoners;

beatings with truncheons, iron rods, clubs with nails driven through the

ends; electric shocks to the head, genitals and kidneys; suspensions from

the ceiling by the feet or hands, often for days; standing naked for hours

in sub-zero temperatures; attacks by trained dogs; shackling, prolonged use

of self-tightening handcuffs and thumbscrews. Torture victims endure

headaches, hallucinations and panic attacks, kidney malfunction, digestive

problems, impaired vision. Those who endured lengthy prison sentences

suffer from progressive cases of vitamin deficiency, scurvy, cachetic edema

and cachexia, conditions resulting from subsisting on meager and filthy

prison rations. The US Humanitarian Aid provides funds to a Torture

Survivor Program in Dharamsala which at present treats 470 patients.

Ms. Tsering Lhamo, director of the Kathmandu clinic and deserves

special praise for her service to the refugees. A former Fulbright scholar

who studied in the Washington DC area, she embodies the dedication and

high standards of the Dalai Lama's exile culture. The aid mandated by the

United States congress which supports her work in Kathmandu and the

Reception Center in Dharamsala has saved lives, healed sick children,

rehabilitated survivors of torture and should by all means be maintained.

RESETTLEMENT

Today there are 54 Tibetan settlements throughout India, Bhutan

and Nepal, 26 agricultural, 17 agro-industrial and 11 handicraft-based.

The Tibetan refugee population has grown to approximately 121,143.

According to a 1994 census 69,426 Tibetan refugees live in settlements,

another 51,715 live in scattered communities across the Indian

subcontinent. The Dalai Lama's Central Tibetan Relief Committee,

created in 1960, works with the Ministry of Labor and Rehabilitation of the

Government of India and various voluntary organizations to provide

assistance to poor, handicapped, unsettled Tibetan refugees.

The Tibetan settlements are a stellar example of refugee self-help;

with extremely limited resources, coping with the trauma of loss of nation

and family, adjusting to a vastly different cultures and climates in

through widely varied geographical zones in Nepal and India, the refugees

cleared jungles, started businesses, created farms, homes, schools and

monasteries, an achievement comparable to the Israeli kibbutzim who

transformed a desert into a thriving habitat. In 38 years the Tibetan

settlements have grown from primitive campsites into unified, economically

self-sufficient communities. Refugees often suffer abnormally high rates of

suicide, drug abuse, crime and prostitution, thus the achievements of the

Tibetan refugees in India are remarkable. Literacy is 96% among the

generation born in exile. The Central Tibetan administration established a

Department of Health in 1981, which operates six hospitals, 60 Public

Health centers and 36 clinics offering traditional Tibetan medicine. All of

these facilities serve the Indian community, in some of these clinics 85%

of the patients are Indian. Relations between the Tibetan refugees and

their Indian hosts are as fine an example of peaceful co-existence of two

distinct ethnic and cultural groups as can be found anywhere in the world.

Many Indians regard the Dalai Lama as a mahasiddhi, a living saint, his

Buddhist teachings are frequently attended by Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims.

The Tibetans are deeply grateful to their Indian hosts, at a 1993

conference in New Delhi the Dalai Lama said "India has been the saviour our

nation".

Although the Tibetans have achieved an impressive measure of

self-sufficiency, Tibetans in India are still refugees, live at subsistence

levels in remote communities with no tax base, holding together in a

fragile diaspora. A recent study conducted by a team of Indian

sociologists put the average annual income of a Tibetan in India at apx.

USD $150, whereas the average annual income for an Indian is USD $350. Of

the total arable land of the 26,000 acres allotted to the refugees only 5%

is irrigated, 24 settlements have no wells or ponds, thus most ago-based

settlements yield only one crop annually. The economy of the settlements is

based on cooperative societies so the economies are self-contained and

prices are kept low, thus any investment in these communities goes a very

long way.

Raising funds for the Tibetan refugees is difficult; in several

cases the Chinese have intimidated donors from providing assistance to the

Dalai Lama and the refugees he leads. The largest aid donor remains the

Government of India, but it does not recognize any Tibetan who arrived in

India after 1963 as a refugee. Despite numerous appeals, the Tibetan

refugee community has never received any funding from UNICEF or UNDP. To

this day neither the United Nations, India, nor any sovereign state

recognizes the legitimacy of the Dalai Lama's Tibetan Government in Exile.

Few aid agencies have recognized how the he growing numbers of refugees

newly escaped from Tibet has put an enormous strain on the exile

communities resources, thus The present US Humanitarian Aid is of vital

importance in maintaining the stability and survival of the Tibetan exile

community. Mr. Tempa Tsering of the Dharamsala Information office,

reiterated the importance of the present US. humanitarian aid; "Without

that assistance we wouldn't even have a building for the new refugees to

sleep in, no bandages, no medicine, nothing."

One of the singular achievements of His Holiness the Dalai Lama is

establishing a representative government among the Tibetan refugees.

Chinese propaganda declares that he has "restored a feudal serfdom in

exile" and is plotting to do the same in Tibet. To the contrary, On

September 2, 1960, the Dalai Lama created a parliament-in-exile with

judiciary, executive and legislative branches and a diverse group of

official and independent news organizations. Members of the Assembly of

Tibetan People's Deputies are elected by ballots cast in all the Tibetan

settlements throughout the subcontinent. The Information Office in

Dharamsala makes a special effort to educate new arrivals about Tibet's

history, representative democracy and human rights.

The elder Tibetans who created the settlements are the vital link

between the homeland and the exile. Every refugee who was born in Tibet

and who escaped into exile witnessed military invasion, many lost

relatives, many are survivors of torture, yet most have never had their

stories documented, and still have vivid memories of invasion, flight,

survival in refugee camps, adjustment to exile. Those who work for Central

Tibetan Administration are exceptionally dedicated, talented men and women

who work tirelessly on very small salaries. Their empathy and knowledge

comes from personal experience; they were once refugees, or are the

children of refugees. Said Nyima Samkyar, CTA Welfare officer of the

Chialsa Tibetan Settlement in Eastern Nepal; "In 1959, there was no one to

help, no food, no doctors, nothing. Hundreds died, especially women and

children. Now there is a place where refugees can stay, there is a nurse,

there is some food, there are people who care."

EDUCATION

The Dalai Lama's Central Tibetan Administration does a remarkable

job with refugee children; every child is given a place in a school. In

1959 Pandit Nehru created the Society for Tibetan Education within the

Indian Ministry of Education. Today there are 85 Tibetan schools in India,

Nepal and Bhutan with a current enrollment of 27,230 students. The 45,550

children who have attended these schools are the first Tibetans in history

to have a modern, multi-lingual education. Many have earned university

degrees in India and abroad. About 107 Tibetans have studied in America as

Fulbright Scholars. Tibetan students in Chinese-occupied Tibet receive

substandard education, if any, and cultural and linguistic sinofication.

Since 1990 over 5,000 Tibetan children have escaped from Tibet, without

family, to seek education in these Tibetan exile schools. The schools

are seriously overcrowded, they need textbooks, supplies, additional

dormitories and classrooms to accommodate the increasing numbers of refugee

children escaping from Tibet.

Most new arrivals from Tibet are young, aged 15 to 28, they have

been given no education, no vocational training, no employment, no freedom

of worship, speech and assembly. Although they know little about their

country's history, they are reverently devoted to His Holiness the Dalai

Lama. They know that he was forced into exile in India where he has

established schools, monasteries, and a rule of law. Despite the illness,

disorientation and privation intrinsic to the refugee experience, every new

arrival I have interviewed has expressed relief to have, for the first time

in their lives, freedom of worship, assembly and expression. Said a 25

refugee from Kanze; "The people in Tibet are given no education, they are

kept ignorant and poor. I think all the new arrivals will improve in India,

they'll get education, they'll be free, they will see Buddhism without

guns. They'll change for the better, because they'll get guidance and

respect."

The US Humanitarian Aid funds the Bir School, which has 700 new

arrival students between ages 13-17, and the Transit School, which has 550

student between ages 18-30. Both have long waiting lists. Teachers report

that new arrivals are diligent and eager to learn. Some have mastered

English and/or Hindi, some have started successful businesses,

nevertheless, many live on the fringes of the exile community performing

menial jobs at best. The CTA hopes to build a vocational training center

for new arrivals near Kathmandu. They had hoped to purchase land in

northern India but funding could not be secured in time. Integrating the

new arrivals into the exile world is essential to maintain community

cohesion and good relations with the host countries.

CONCLUSIONS, RECOMMENDATIONS

The Dalai Lama's innumerable attempts to meet with Chinese leaders

to negotiate a settlement have bee rejected outright. Beijing launches

vociferous protest whenever the Dalai Lama meets with heads of state and

goes to great length to block support for Tibetan exiles and refugees.

China claims to have "liberated" Tibet from a "feudal serfdom", but after

nearly four decades of Chinese Communist rule the Tibetans are hardly

willing or contented Chinese subjects. China claims to have modernized

Tibet, but the Tibetan exiles in India have access to both modern and

traditional education in addition to freedom of expression and worship.

With the support of democratic India, the Dalai Lama's exile community

shows how successfully Tibetans have adapted to representative government

and democratic, liberal values while retaining their Tibetan Buddhist

traditions. Unless the Politburo is pressured to accept the Dalai Lama's

offer to negotiate in good faith, and as long as Tibet remains in bondage

to the People's Republic of China, Tibetans will continue their exodus to

India.

I would make the following recommendations;

1) Exhort China's leaders to meet with His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

2) Continue aid to the UNHCR mission in Kathmandu and assign a full

time protection officer to supervise the Tibet-Nepal border.

3) New arrivals from Tibet provide vital information about conditions

inside Tibet. The US Embassy in Nepal and UNHCR have urged that a US

monitor, employed by the State Department, interview and record refugee

testimony for the State Department's "Country Reports on Human Rights"

Tibet section.

4) Secure official refugee status and identity cards for new arrivals.

5) Continue to provide financial and technical assistance to the

Central Tibetan Administration until such time that the Tibetan refugees

can return to their homeland without fear or persecution.

6) Ensure the health and safety of unaccompanied Tibetan minors

entering Nepal and India. Find sponsors for child refugees whose parents

remain in Tibet and those with refugee parents who cannot work or cannot

afford school tuition.

7) Provide special care to victims of torture.

I thank the Chairman and the members of the committee for accepting this

testimony.