China is pressuring Nepalese Government to act on Tibetans living there and the refugees fleeing from Tibet said former US President Jimmy Carter on Monday.
“My hope is that the Nepali government will not accede,” he told reporters. Carter was in Nepal to encourage political parties to conduct delayed national elections and to push forward a peace process following the war.
About 20,000 thousand Tibetans live in Nepal and hundreds of refugee flee China’s occupied Tibet into exile via Nepal. However, the growing Chinese influence on the impoverished country is making it difficult for the Tibetans to enjoy even the fundamental rights such as holding protest or celebrating important cultural and religious festivals. The fate of escaping refugees is even worse.
In the past, Tibetan exiles captured by Nepali police were handed to the United Nation’s High Commissioner for Refugees for their onward journey to India, where the Dalai Lama lives and the exile administration is located.
However, Reuters quoted the former president saying that the Tibetan exiles were now facing harassment at the border, and called on the government to resist pressure to impede the movement of refugees.
On 13 February, Drupchen Tsering, 25, who came into exile from Tibet, set himself on fire in Nepal’s capital city Kathmandu. He passed away on the same day with 96 percent burns.
Despite repeated appeals and protests by exile Tibetans and their supporters, the Nepalese authorities refused to handover his body. His body was secretly cremated thus violating the fundamental Tibetan custom of funeral prayers and last rites.
In its 665-page report issued in February this year, Human Rights Watch (HRW), assessed progress on human rights during the past year in more than 90 countries. HRW said that Nepal’s failures on human rights included a lack of movement on measures to improve the rights of women, children, and Tibetan refugees.
The report said that the Nepal increased restrictions on Tibetan refugees, under pressure from the Chinese government. It continued to deny Tibetans the right to openly celebrate their holidays, including the Tibetan New Year and the Dalai Lama’s birthday.
