Published by: World Tibet Network News Sunday, January 11, 1998

TIBET: Countless children risk their lives in a dangerous trek across the imalayas to flee from Chinese rule

TIME MAGAZINE: JANUARY 19, 1998 VOL. 151 NO. 2

Tibetan children brave a treacherous mountain pass and life alone in a foreign country to flee from Chinese rule

By TIM MCGIRK, Namche Bazar

In the himalayan autumn, thousands of trekkers climb each year through forests of silver fir and across wobbly rope bridges in Nepal, all for a glimpse of 8,848-m-high Mount Everest. Some are mountaineers who have come to indulge in high-altitude heroics. But most are tourists, typified by a Japanese office worker who recently lugged up her favorite doll, a cuddly penguin, so she could snap its photo in front of Everest, as if the world's highest mountain were little more than a cardboard cut-out in a shopping mall.

Gasping for breath as they ascend to the next scenic photo op, the trekkers harely bother to notice the armies of ragged Tibetan children often straggling down this same Himalayan trail from Namche Bazar to Lukla, two Nepalese outposts near Everest. They are more courageous-and certainly less well-equipped-than any Everest conqueror. Snowblind, hungry and often frostbitten, these kids usually have fled across the treacherous high ranges at their parents' urging to escape Chinese repression in their native Tibet. As winter approaches, severe cold forces the Chinese border guards to abandon their checkpost at Nangpa La Pass (altitude, nearly 5,800 m), and the Tibetan refugees-those who survive-are able to stagger across the glaciers into Nepal. Wearing canvas sneakers and layers of dirty sweaters, the children-some as young as four-have braved the terrible crossing in Everest's shadow on nothing but black tea and tsampa, a kind of barley flour. Often they encounter the bodies of other Tibetan refugees entombe

d in the ice after getting left behind by their guides or lost in blizzards. Says Tsering Lhamo, head nurse at the Tibetan Reception Center in Katmandu: "Every

winter, so many children die in the snow, while their parents back in Tibet think they are safe and happy in Nepal or India."

So why do Tibetan parents risk the lives of their children on a Himalayan odyssey that would daunt even the hardiest Everest summiteer? Increasingly, they see little hope for their sons and daughters in Chinese-ruled Tibet. They complain that few jobs or school places are open to Tibetans, that most opportunities are snatched by the Chinese settlers pouring into the region. "Every night I'd watch my parents fighting because there wasn't enough food," a child at the Katmandu reception center says through his wind-blistered lips. "That's why I left."

Many Tibetans also believe that only by leaving their homeland can the children learn Tibetan culture and language. After a medical check-up in Katmandu, the first stop for most of the youngsters is the northern Indian hilltown of Dharamsala, where they can meet their exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama. "We want the Dalai Lama to return to Tibet," says an elderly Tibetan man who helped shepherd five children over the mountain border. "But it's like waiting for a cloud. Better we go to him." For all of 1997, Tibetan authorities are expecting more than 5,000 new arrivals in Dharamsala-double last year's

figure-including at least 1,000 children.

For Dorje Tsering, his wife and six children, the yearning for a better life in exile began several weeks ago in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital. Having saved up $630 for the journey, the Tserings joined several other families and hired an open truck to drive them to Tingri, near the border. Unfortunately, someone

tipped off the cops. "The police said, 'Why are you showing your backs to the Chinese government?'" Tsering recalls. "I replied, 'I'm a poor person. I have no life here.' They beat us, stole my money and put us in jail." He adds with a grin: "Luckily, I had so many kids, they didn't know what to do with us all in jail and let us go." Tsering begged money from relatives and set out across the Himalayas, woefully underprepared. His six children are all younger than 12 and could not always walk through the deep snow and along the crumbling ledges on mountain passes. He couldn't carry the food and the children, so he had to abandon some of his supplies along the way. Fortunately, traders leading

a yak caravan found them, fed them strips of goat jerky and led them across the Nangpa La glacier, a journey of three days and nights. As payment for the safe passage, Tsering had to hand over all but one of his blankets to the yak traders.

Other Tibetan children, entrusted to crooked guides, have been less fortunate. One 17-year-old girl collapsed on the glacier in October. When she came to, several hours later, she had lost her toes due to exposure and her guide was gone. For two days, the girl crawled down the mountain before she was rescued by

Buddhist nuns. Sonam Dolker, 11, was also stricken with frostbite. Stumbling from exhaustion, she was beaten and taunted by her guide when she tried to rest. "My face was bleeding because he hit me so many times," she says. Sonam crouches alone in the corner of her school dormitory in Dharamsala. She begins to cry while talking of her home and family. "My escape was kept so secret I couldn't even say good-bye to my best friend," she sobs. "If only my parents could afford it, they would come and take me away. They must miss me too." Still, her fate could have been worse. According to nurse Lhamo, some guides help children escape from Tibet, only to sell them as servants to rich families in Katmandu.

Dangers await fleeing Tibetan children on both sides of the border. Since the communists fell from power in Nepal in 1995, police are no longer under orders to hand back captured Tibetan refugees to China. Yet the exiles are often beaten and robbed by Nepalese police. Over the years, the Tibetans have elaborated a

sort of Himalayan underground railroad in which friendly Sherpas show them how to dodge police checkpoints in the forests and find shelter in caves, lamaseries and even basements of inns frequented by tourists. Still, the children are never safe until they reach the Tibet reception center in Katmandu, which gets help from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Says nurse Lhamo: "When they see me wearing my Tibetan chuba [a traditional skirt], a smile always breaks out on their faces. They've been so scared. They can't trust anybody."

For many young Tibetans, the ordeal of crossing the Himalayas is nothing compared with the drawn-out agonies of exile. In sweltering India, they must cope with alien languages such as Hindi and English, strange customs and curries loaded with firecracker-like chilies. The worst surprise, though, is finding

out that their fellow Tibetans aren't always welcoming. About half of the refugees become monks and nuns, entering Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in India that are already jammed with newcomers. But many others find it difficult to carve out new lives within the community of more than 100,000 Tibetan exiles

in India. Financed by international donors and the Dalai Lama's own monastery, new facilities are being built in and around Dharamsala to handle the flood of young refugees. The Tibetan Children's Villages, as these foster homes-cum-schools are known, are still overcrowded, with two and often three children

sharing a bed. Nevertheless, they manage to keep up high academic standards, and a few bright teenagers earn scholarships to study at U.S. and European universities. This is a prospect they couldn't dream of back in Tibet. Says Dorjee Wangdue, a ruddy-cheeked 14-year-old boy: "My father paid 1,200 yuan [$145] for a guide to take me to Nepal because he knows that young people in Tibet can only waste their lives in bars or on the street. There are no jobs. There's nothing to do."

But life is tough on the other side. Drug and alcohol abuse is rampant among younger exiles. And relief workers note that, after years of living under the Chinese system, recent arrivals are disconnected from their traditional Buddhist beliefs and values. "These youngsters from Lhasa have been spoiled by the

Chinese," says Lhamo. "They're very naughty, and they fight a lot." Nor is India the ideal place for an immigrant to make a fresh start. After leaving school, young Tibetans find themselves alone in India, where nearly 400 million people live below the poverty line and jobs are scarce. They may have come to escape

the Chinese, but because of their Mongolian features, many end up being hired as cooks and waiters to give a semblance of authenticity to Chinese restaurants in New Delhi and Bombay. Another option is to serve as cheap labor for earlier,

better-off Tibetan settlers who formed businesses. One newcomer, a farmer, walked for weeks in the mountains, lost and alone, before finding his way out of Tibet to join the fight against Chinese occupation. He was disappointed when he arrived. "I thought Tibetans here would be patriotic," he says. "But how can

they hope to return to Tibet if they are building houses and hotels here?" Says a young Tibetan woman in Dharamsala: "When I was in Tibet, we thought Tibetans in India were working hard for the cause. But the way they dress, the way they keep their hair-there is a lot of Western influence. We can't keep out the Chinese and let in the West." Neither of the refu-gees would be named: they worry that if they returned to Tibet, they would be arrested.

Despite the hardships the exiles have endured, the Dalai Lama is now urging them to return. New refu-gees between the ages of 18 and 30 are given basic lessons in Tibetan and English at a tin-roofed transit camp near Dharamsala and then told to go home and work with their countrymen. "We're encouraging the youth to go back," says Tsewang Yeshi, a director of the Tibetan Children's Village in Dharamsala. "We can't make things easy in China, but we can't give up our ground, either."

Tibetans in Dharamsala reckon that only 60% of adult refugees heed such advice and return home-and children rarely go back. Stories abound of the many Tibetans who tried to return but were arrested and tortured by Chinese police as suspected spies of the "splittist Dalai clique." Their education in Buddhism, culture and language may make them better Tibetans, but it doesn't impress the Chinese much. At first, many returnees found jobs as tourist guides in Lhasa. But lately, Chinese authorities have begun asking how they mysteriously learned to speak English. Those who confess to having made the trek to India are reportedly fired and even jailed. Faced with such a painful homecoming, many young Tibetans are opting to stay put in India.

Dorjee Phuntsok has a few more years to go before facing this dilemma. He was four when he first tried to slip out of Tibet; he was caught and jailed for two months. Undeterred, his parents sent him off again. A bribe to Chinese police at the border secured his escape, and he now sits in Dharamsala with 200 other

Tibetan schoolchildren, scrubbed clean and wearing a blue-and-white uniform, eagerly awaiting an audience with the Dalai Lama. Heads bowed, the children sing to their spiritual leader, seated far above them in a covered pavilion. The

opportunity to receive the Dalai Lama's blessing is often the sole reason for Tibetans to brave the Himalayan blizzards, but Dorjee has one other wish: that somehow, he could tell his parents back in Lhasa that he survived the journey. His years ahead as an orphan in exile may prove just as arduous as his

mountain crossing.

-With reporting by Meenakshi Ganguly/Dharamsala