China frets at new Tibetan protests in Nepal

Wednesday, July 01, 2009

IANS
By Sudeshna Sarkar
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Nepalese police detain Tibetan activists during a peace march to enter Tibet along the Nepal-Tibet border at Andheri, about 75 kilometres northeast of Kathmandu, on June 26, 2009. Nepalese police on June 26 arrested 34 Tibetan exiles who tried to stage a demonstration near the Chinese border. The group was stopped by police as they were driving to the border, and were arrested as they were continuing on foot. The activists waved placards and chanted anti-China slogans and said they were protesting against Chinese suppression of the Tibetan people.(Getty Images)

Kathmandu, July 1 (IANS)-- Fretting at the resumption of anti-China protests in Nepal by Tibetan refugees, Beijing has sent a delegation to Kathmandu to seek support from the new government of Nepal to quell them.

Zhang Jiuhuan, a former ambassador to Nepal and current politburo member of the Communist Party of China, Wednesday met Nepal’s new Foreign Minister Sujata Koirala to register his government’s concern at the fresh eruption of protests calling for a ‘Free Tibet’.

Zhang arrived in Kathmandu Wednesday leading a high-level delegation, five days after Nepal police arrested nearly six dozen Tibetans at the Nepal-China border.

The Tibetan group, that included eight women, were trying to cross the Nepal border and reach the Tibet Autonomous Region now controlled by China. They had planned to stage a public demonstration that would draw attention to the ‘violation of human rights’ in the former Buddhist kingdom.

Though they were prevented by Nepal police from entering Tibet and brought back to Kathmandu, the slogans they raised for a ‘Free Tibet’ received wide media attention, much to Beijing’s anger.

Koirala, foreign ministry sources said, had assured the visitor that Nepal was committed to preventing anti-China activities on its soil.

China is also concerned at some Nepal lawmakers’ recent visit to Dharamshala in India, where exiled Tibetan leader Dalai Lama has his official residence.

The lawmakers reportedly told the Tibetan diaspora in the Indian town that after their return to Kathmandu, they would ask the coalition government of Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal to allow the office of the Dalai Lama’s representative in Nepal to re-open.

Police chase and beat a Tibetan monk during an anti-China protest in the Nepali capital of Kathmandu in March 2008. Nepal’s brutal handling of Tibetan protesters had come under intense international criticism and the government had been accused of cracking down on the refugees under Chinese pressure. (Photo: Reuters/file)

The office, started after 1959, was shut down in 2005 after then king Gyanendra sought the support of the Chinese government for his coup.

The lawmakers are also said to have promised that they would lobby the government to issue fresh identity cards to the Tibetans who have been seeking refuge in Nepal.

Only about 20,000 Tibetans, who fled their homeland during the Chinese annexation of Tibet in the 1950s, were registered as refugees by the Nepal government. Hundreds more have been denied IDs after China said there were no Tibetan refugees, only ‘illegal immigrants’ who should be dealt with accordingly.

Beijing has stepped up overtures to the new government of Nepal and currently, a delegation of Nepali authors and writers is visiting China at the invitation of the Chinese government.

Zhang also issued an invitation to Koirala and her father, former prime minister Girija Prasad Koirala, who remains one of the key players in Nepal’s politics, to visit China.

Earlier, the prime minister has also been invited by Beijing to visit China.