[“Nepal used to be quite
easy for Tibetans, to get jobs here and integrate into the community,” Tashi
Ganden, a former monk and prominent political prisoner in China, said as he sat
on a cafe rooftop in the bustling Tibetan Boudhanath neighborhood of Katmandu.
“That was before the Chinese influence.”]
By Edward Wong
 |
Gilles Sabrie for The New York Times
The Boudhanath stupa, a hub for Katmandu’s Tibetan
community.A monk committed
suicide by self-immolation near the stupa in February to protest China. |
CHOSAR, (Upper Mustang) Nepal — The wind-scoured desert valley here, just south of Tibet, was once a famed
transit point for the Tibetan yak caravans laden with salt that lumbered over
the icy ramparts of the Himalayas. In the 1960s, it became a base for Tibetan
guerrillas trained by the C.I.A. to attack Chinese troops occupying their
homeland.
These days, it is the
Chinese who are showing up in this far tip of the Buddhist kingdom of Mustang, northwest of Katmandu,
Nepal. Chinese officials are seeking to stem the flow of disaffected Tibetans
fleeing to Nepal and to enlist the help of the Nepalese authorities in cracking
down on the political activities of the 20,000 Tibetans already here.
China is exerting its
influence across Nepal in a variety of ways, mostly involving financial
incentives. In Mustang, China is providing $50,000 in annual food aid and sending military
officials across the border to discuss with local Nepalese what the ceremonial
prince of Mustang calls “border security.”
Their efforts across the
country have borne fruit. The Nepalese police regularly detain Tibetans during
anti-China protests in Katmandu, and they have even curbed celebrations of the
birthday of the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader, according to Tibetans
living in Nepal.
In the first eight
months of 2012, the number of Tibetan refugees crossing the Himalayas into
Nepal was about 400, half as many as during the same period in 2011. Tibetans
blame tighter Chinese security in Tibet, as well as Chinese-trained Nepal
border guards, for the reduced migration.
The Nepalese government
has also refused to allow 5,000 refugees to leave for the United States, even
though the American government has said it would grant the refugees asylum.
“Nepal used to be quite
easy for Tibetans, to get jobs here and integrate into the community,” Tashi
Ganden, a former monk and prominent political prisoner in China, said as he sat
on a cafe rooftop in the bustling Tibetan Boudhanath neighborhood of Katmandu.
“That was before the Chinese influence.”
Nepal is one of the
world’s most impoverished countries, made poorer by a decade-long civil war
between Maoist guerrillas and the military that ended in 2006, and by the
continuing instability of the government. The nation is bordered by India and
China, and Nepalese leaders have sought to use China as a counterbalance to
long-running Indian influence.
The courtship between
Nepal and China has gained momentum in recent years, as China has poured in aid
money, infrastructure expertise and, in Lumbini, believed to be the birthplace
of Buddha, investment in Buddhist sites. Meanwhile, it has been assigning
ambassadors to Nepal who have backgrounds in security work.
Former President Jimmy
Carter told reporters in Katmandu on April 1 that Chinese pressure was making
the journey of Tibetans to Nepal more difficult. “My hope is that the Nepali
government will not accede,” he said, according to Reuters.
Shankar Prasad Koirala,
the joint secretary of the Ministry of Home Affairs, said in a telephone
interview that Nepal had not turned its back on the refugees. “The government
of Nepal is assisting them and treating them on humanitarian grounds,” he said.
Other Nepalese officials
have explained that Nepal abides by a “one-China policy” and does not tolerate
anti-China separatist activities on its soil.
China’s campaign to
block Tibetans from entering Nepal increased in 2008 after a widespread Tibetan
uprising. Since then, at least 110 self-immolations by Tibetans living under
Chinese rule have further prompted Chinese officials to tighten security in
Tibetan towns and along the border with Nepal.
The practice of protest
by self-immolation has reached Katmandu, making Nepalese officials
even more anxious about the Tibetan issue. In February, a Tibetan monk,
Drupchen Tsering, 25, died after setting fire to himself near a revered
Buddhist stupa, or dome-shaped shrine, in Boudhanath.
Tibetans in the area
asked for the monk’s body, but local officials had it cremated in the middle of
the night late last month, saying no family members had claimed it, and later
posted notices warning against public ceremonies, according to the
International Campaign for Tibet, an advocacy group based in Washington.
There has been a
clampdown on open religious celebrations in recent years, with some Tibetans
detained for days. Those celebrations include festivities around the birthday
of the Dalai Lama, who lives in exile in India and had a representative in
Katmandu until the office was shut down by the government in 2005.
One young man, Tsering,
said he went to a monastery in Katmandu in April 2012 for a birthday ceremony,
only to find the Nepalese police blocking the area. The gathering was moved to
an assembly hall. “We can’t even celebrate the Dalai Lama’s birthday,” he said.
“Things have changed a lot.”
Mr. Tashi, the former
monk, said dozens of Tibetans were pre-emptively detained in January 2012 when Wen Jiabao, the Chinese prime minister at
the time, made an
unannounced four-hour visit to Katmandu. Mr. Wen had scheduled
a visit for the previous month, but it was canceled because of concerns over
protests by Tibetans, local residents said. During his visit, Mr. Wen agreed
that China would give Nepal $1.18 billion in aid over three years, among other
support.
The earliest Tibetan
refugees arrived in Nepal in 1959, when the Dalai Lama fled Tibet, and they
settled in refugee camps, of which there are still 13. A Tibetan enclave sprang
up around Boudhanath. Some Tibetans became rich by making carpets and
handicrafts, and prominent Tibetan monasteries amassed wealth and purchased
prime real estate in the Katmandu Valley.
The population was
bolstered by more recent political refugees, like Mr. Tashi. The Tibetans used
to be given refugee cards that guaranteed them some rights, but Nepal ended
that practice in 1998.
These days, refugees pay
about $5,000 to smugglers to get them to Nepal. They generally stay six to
eight weeks at a transit center in the Katmandu Valley run by the United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, then board a bus for India. There, the
Tibetans hope to get an audience with the Dalai Lama.
Some are pilgrims who
eventually try to make their way back to Nepal and then Tibet. There is
suspicion among longtime refugees that some of the refugees are spies for
China.
Before the Tibetan
uprising five years ago, 2,000 to 4,000 refugees reached the transit center
each year. That dropped to 500 to 600 in 2008, as Chinese security forces
locked down Tibetan towns, and crept back up to 850 the next year. It has
remained low ever since.
For decades, there had
been an understanding that Nepalese border guards would allow refugees they
encountered to continue on to sanctuary. But now Tibetans suspect that the low
numbers of refugees reaching Katmandu could be in part a result of guards sending
back Tibetans they catch, especially since China is now involved in border
security training programs.
There is no independent
monitoring of the Nepalese security forces on the border. Last year, CNN
broadcast video of unknown Chinese men in plain clothes harassing a CNN
cameraman on the Nepalese side of the border while a guard stood by.
“We don’t really know
what happens in border areas now,” said Kate Saunders, a researcher for the International Campaign for Tibet.
For China, the Mustang
region is one of the most delicate border areas, given the history of the Khampa
guerrilla resistance there and the flight through the kingdom in 1999 of the
Karmapa Lama, who was secretly escaping to India from Tibet. The border only
opens now on rare occasions for a market between Tibetans and local residents.
People of Mustang could
once cross into Tibet with a letter from the king to make a pilgrimage to Mount
Kailas, the holiest mountain in Tibetan Buddhist cosmology. But the Chinese cut
that off a dozen years ago.
“We’ve asked our
government to try to reopen it,” said Jigme Singi Palbar Bista, the prince of
Mustang. “Our people have always looked to the spiritual light of Tibet.”
