World Tibet Network News Thursday, February 05, 1998

London, 4 Feb (TIN) Twenty-one Tibetan refugees in India, including a former political prisoner, have been imprisoned by the Indian authorities for not having valid residence papers, according to reports from the town of Dharamsala in Northern India.

The detainees are in the same situation as most of the 12,000 or more Tibetans who have sought refuge in India in the last five years, few of whom have received legally obtained documentation from the Indian authorities. The current arrests in Dharamsala appear to be a signal by the Indian authorities that they are not prepared to offer unlimited access to Tibetan refugees.

In the last five years an average of 200 Tibetans a month, most of them young men and monks, have been arriving in India through Nepal. The influx is said to have stretched the resources of the exile Tibetan Government, which is based in Dharamsala, a former hill resort 420 kms north-west of New Delhi and housing the Dalai Lama and some 7,000 Tibetans, including a large number of newly arrived students from Tibet who return to their country after completing studies in India.

The 21 men currently detained in Dharamsala have been charged under section 14 of the Foreigner's Act for not having valid documents to enter India, and, if convicted, could face deportation, according to a Tibetan human rights organisation based in the area. All the Tibetans are recent arrivals to India, and so would have found it difficult to obtain legally valid papers to remain in the country, according to current Indian practice.

Among the detainees is Lobsang Lungtok, a 22 year old former monk who was imprisoned for 18 months in Tibet for putting up a poster on a school wall accusing the Chinese of destroying Tibetan culture. He escaped to India in June 1997 six months after completing his prison sentence in Tibet.

He was detained in Dharamsala on 4th January this year. Prison conditions are said to be satisfactory, but friends say they were not informed of his detention or allowed to visit him until 20 days after he had been

imprisoned.

The detainees were due to attend court hearings on the 2nd and 3rd February, but proceedings were postponed for technical reasons. Legal representation has been arranged by the Tibetan government in exile, which said its Home Minister had met with Indian officials to discuss the case as soon as details of it emerged.

"The Tibetan government in exile is making an effort with the Indian government to get them released," said Tenpa Tsering, head of the exiles' Department of Information and International Relations.

A Tibetan organisation based in Dharamsala, the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, has appealed to the District Magistrate in the town for the immediate release of Lobsang Lungtok. "We are concerned that if Lobsang Lungtok was returned to Tibet, he would be re-arrested and imprisoned," said Lobsang Nyandak, director of the Centre. "Since he is a recent arrival in Tibet, he certainly would not have any valid papers to remain in India," he said.

TIN News Update / 4 February, 1998: Refugees Arrested by Indian Police Security was increased in Dharamsala after three Tibetan asylum seekers were arrested there in December 1995 and accused of spying for China, and in December last year a man was shot and injured in a Dharamsala street by a Tibetan who had been hired by criminals in Lhasa to pursue an asylum seeker to India to avenge a gangland murder in the Tibetan capital. But the arrest last month of Lobsang Lungtok and the other detainees was random and not a reflection of their activities in Dharamsala, said Lobsang Nyandak, who confirmed that none of the detainees are suspected of espionage.

Exile officials stressed their general gratitude to the Indian government and are reported to be encouraging many of the asylum seekers to return to Tibet. "Out of these 50 years, we Tibetan refugees have made India our second home for the last 38 years and we have been made welcome, looked after and treated like any citizen of this great and wonderful country. For this we are most grateful," the Dalai Lama said on 14th August 1997 in a speech to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Indian independence.

Lobsang Lungtok: 18 Months for Poem on Poster

Lobsang Lungtok was imprisoned by the Chinese authorities in June 1995 for putting up pro-independence posters in his native town of Rekong (Chinese: Tongren), situated in Amdo, the former north-eastern area of Tibet which is now part of Qinghai province.

Lobsang Lungtok was convicted at a trial in August 1996 for spreading "counter-revolutionary propaganda with intent to sabotage the unity of the nationalities".

"Monastic institutes and the precious culture are being destroyed," said the poem which he had written on the incriminating posters. "When we peace-loving and Buddhist Tibetans were living our lives peacefully, the Chinese killed and imprisoned many Tibetans with the use of arms and violence; the Chinese are trying to eliminate our precious literature."

At the trial the monk, formerly at Rongbo monastery in Rekong, accepted that he written the posters but denied that the contents were illegal. "I told them that the wall posters were factually correct, because Tibet is a free country historically," Lobsang said, after his escape to India. "I told them that I didn't believe writing something that is true was counter-revolutionary, but that it was up to them to judge." The monk was sentenced to 18 months in prison, and completed the sentence in December 1996.

Lobsang Lungtok is suffering from health problems as a result of beatings administered during interrogation and illness contracted while in prison, when he was sometimes denied food, according to reports.

A French organisation which is sponsoring Lobsang Lungtok and other former political prisoners from Tibet said that it would be asking the French government to raise the matter of the arrests in Dharamsala with the Indian government. "These people come to Dharamsala because they are unable to receive an education in their country, or because they were forced out of work due to high taxes, or because they could not find a job after being released from prison," said Jean-Paul Ribes of the Comite de Soutien au Peuple Tibetain in France.

Some 2,200 Tibetans escaped into Nepal last year, compared to just over a thousand in 1995. Tibetans who arrive in Nepal and who are found to be genuine cases of concern by the in Kathmandu office of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees are sent on to India, but their status there remains unclear.

In 1959 India gave shelter to 80,000 Tibetans who fled China's take-over of Tibet, but India is not a signatory of the UN Refugee Convention and those Tibetans technically are stateless persons who have not been explicitly awarded refugee status.