Kathmandu, Oct 1: At least 38 Tibetan exiles were arrested in Nepal on Thursday on suspicion of planning to hold demonstrations as China marks 60 years of communist rule, AFP reported Nepali police as saying.
Police had arrested 10 Tibetans as they walked along a street in Nepal’s capital Kathmandu after receiving reports that they intended to gather for anti-China protests, one official reportedly said.
“They will be released after the necessary investigations,” sub-inspector Chabiraman Bhattarai told AFP.
Another officer who asked not to be named said police had arrested 38 Tibetans from different parts of the capital on Thursday morning.
The arrests came as China celebrated 60 years of communist rule with a military parade and lavish ceremonies on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.
Nepal is home to around 20,000 exiled Tibetans who began arriving in large numbers in 1959 when the Dalai Lama fled Tibet after a failed uprising.
Sandwiched between India and China, Nepal has supported Beijing’s “One China” policy that views Tibet as an integral part of China.
The government in Kathmandu has come under increasing pressure from Beijing to suppress anti-China activity on its soil, and activists say it has responded by adopting a harder line against the exiles.
Last year, Tibetan exiles demonstrated in Kathmandu almost daily for nearly eight months, targeting the Chinese embassy, Chinese embassy consular office and the United Nations after unrest in Tibet faced brutal Chinese military crackdown.
Tibetan demonstrations were routinely stopped by Nepali police, often using excessive force. The demonstrators regularly faced arrests, intimidation and in some cases individual threats and arbitrary detention.
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.
Update: Police detained nearly 70 Tibetan exiles in the Nepalese capital on Thursday for protesting decades of communist rule in China, according to AP.
The protesters, wearing T-shirts that said “Free Tibet,” reportedly demonstrated near the Chinese Embassy’s visa section and half a dozen other places in Katmandu.
Police officer Arjun Jung Shahi said authorities were screening those detained. “We will finalize a list of those to be detained and those to be released by the evening.”
