| Satya |
Posted
on 31-May-03 10:27 PM
It shows that Nepla is afraid of China.Considering UNHCR's interest to help the Tibetans we should have allowed them to leave Nepal garcefully instead of forcing them back to thier home land occupied by China. No doubt, they will be prosecuted. Several embassies in Beijing where the North Koreans had takenrefuge had successfully negotiead with Chinese government to allow the Koreans to leave China for third country.
Here is copy and paste from Nepalnews.com:
Nepal deports 18 Tibetans
Eighteen Tibetans, who entered Nepal last month hoping to flee to the Dalai Lama's base in northern India, were deported today through the Chinese embassy, AFP reported Sunday quoting a Tibetan activist.
Wangchuk, Tshering, head of the Tibetan Welfare Centre, said the Tibetans were handed over to the Chinese embassy officials who drove them to the border.
Tibetan activists expressed fear that the Tibetans would be punished, perhaps in a labour camp, upon return. Tshering said the Tibetans had unsuccessfully tried to arrange for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to stop the deportation.
"The Nepali government did not listen to the appeal of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to hand the Tibetans to them so they could travel onward to Dharmasala in Himachal Pradesh in northern India to meet the head of their religion," the Dalai Lama Wangchuk said.
He said the Nepali Police and immigration department officials handed over the 18 Tibetans, who included eight minors, from police custody to the Chinese embassy, which took them to the Kodari border post 114 Km northeast of Kathmandu.
"A Chinese embassy mini-van, whose registration number was concealed, drove them to the border with escort of another Chinese embassy car and a police van," said Wangchuk. "This is a gross violation of human rights and the Nepal government has acted against its obligation to international law and human rights," he said.
A UNHCR official here, Giulia Riccia-relli- Ranawat, confirmed the UN agency offered to take the Tibetans to India. "We appealed to the Nepal government that they should not be handed over to
the Chinese authorities," she said. Twenty-one Tibetans were arrested here in mid-April after entering Nepal en route to Dharmasala.
Three of them were young children who were handed over to the UNHCR shortly after the arrest. The others were detained and ordered to pay fines of up to 64 dollars each-money collected by Tibetan activists and representatives of the Dalai Lama.
There are between 30,000 and 35,000 Tibetan refugees settled in Nepal, but the Kingdom is careful not to anger Beijing and has refused to let the Dalai Lama visit. The Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule. He won the Noble Peace Prize three decades later. nepalnews.com am June 1
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