World Tibet Network News Sunday, April 12, 1998

DHARMSALA, India, Apr 12 (AP) For nearly four decades, Tibetans have been making the treacherous journey across the Himalayas to escape Chinese rule, taking refuge in exile with their revered leader, the Dalai Lama.

Now, the illicit traffic through the high, snow-covered passes is increasingly moving in both directions. The Dalai Lama wants young educated Tibetans to return to their homeland to keep Tibetan traditions alive.

The Tibetans go the way they came: on foot, braving frostbite and hunger, evading Chinese border patrols. They say they are "escaping back.''

International human rights groups say China, which claims sovereignty over Tibet, has flooded the forbidding Tibetan plateau with ethnic Chinese settlers and seeks to destroy the indigenous culture. The Dalai Lama accuses China of committing cultural genocide and wants to negotiate autonomy for the land he ruled unchallenged until 1950.

Chinese officials deny trying to stamp out Tibetan culture and denounce the Dalai Lama and his followers as "splittists'' bent on winning independence for Tibet.

Three years after leaving Tibet, 30-year-old Lakshan is preparing for the even more dangerous return.

"Our most effective resistance to the Chinese is to preserve our culture, tradition and language. There is no way we are going to physically fight them,'' said Lakshan, who has only one name.

"I'm 101 percent sure once I get back I will be in prison for at least a month. Nearly everyone is arrested. But I've got no choice. I'm going back,'' he said, tossing back shoulder-length hair.

Alongside the steady flow of refugees moving southward across the Tibet-Nepal border, there has always been a smaller stream going north into Tibet: traders and smugglers; professional guides for refugee groups; pilgrims returning home after receiving a blessing from the Dalai Lama.

Also among them are parents who deposit their brightest children at the Dalai Lama's boarding schools in India and return to their remaining family in Tibet.

Some of these children nurtured in India, armed with an education and political awareness, are going home. In the last 10 years, as many as 1,000 have gone back, said Sonam Topgyal, chairman of the Tibetan exile administration.

Many are found, arrested and interrogated. To avoid jail, some sign denunciations of the Dalai Lama. Afterwards, they are kept under surveillance. Usually they are the first to be picked up at the first sign of popular unrest, Topgyal said.

Some simply melt back into their villages. Others find jobs in the tourist trade, although last year 66 India-educated Tibetans were fired from jobs as tourist guides, Topgyal said.

Since the Dalai Lama fled Tibet in 1959 during an abortive anti-China uprising, 100,000 Tibetans have joined him in India. Thousands more live in Europe and North America.

About 2,000 Tibetans make the hazardous exit across the mountains every year to reach Katmandu, Nepal's capital, where officers of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees register them. From there, they are bused to the northern Indian city of Dharmsala, the Dalai Lama's base in exile.

In a valley 6 miles from Dharmsala is a cluster of tin barracks housing 400 Tibetans in their late teens and 20s. Against a backdrop of white peaks and mountain streams, the students take crash courses in the Tibetan language, culture, Buddhism and English. Education in Tibet is in Chinese.

The newcomers are easy to spot. Their eyes are dull, their body language withdrawn. Often their cheeks are still raw from wind, sun and frostbite on treks from remote Tibetan villages that may take a month or more.

The Tibetans call it the "Transit Camp.'' The Chinese, who are now aware of the 4-year-old institution, call it the "Political Education School'' and suspect its aim is to subvert their authority in Tibet.

Refugees between the ages of 17 and 30, those too old for regular school but ill-equipped to work, are sent to the camp for three-year courses.

At the Transit Camp they are encouraged to return to Tibet to share their knowledge and to counter what Tibetans call Chinese propaganda against the Dalai Lama. Officials claim about 70 percent do.

"We think it is right for people to go back to Tibet. They give an invisible message and invisible strength to our people,'' said Professor Samdhong Rinpoche, speaker of the Tibetan exile assembly who is considered the No. 2 political figure after the Dalai Lama.

"The more people who leave Tibet, the easier their (China's) rule,'' he said.

There is also a more practical reason for urging Tibetans to return home. With so many refugees to care for, the Tibetan exile administration is stretched in resources and cannot absorb many more. Infants who previously were accepted into nurseries are now being turned away.

The facilities of the government in exile are financed by a 2 percent voluntary income tax on Tibetan exiles and by private donations, while schools and clinics are paid for by India's government and international humanitarian agencies.