Random arrest of Tibetans in Kathmandu, Tibet coordinator briefly detained/ENG

2012. március 15./Phayul.com/TibetPress

DHARAMSHALA, March 15: Nepali police in Kathmandu were out in full force, randomly arresting common Tibetans, as well as the head of the Tibetan Welfare Office, yesterday as a preventive measure to avoid anti-China protests in the city.

The police had created an inclusion zone around the Chinese embassy areas in the capital and people were barred from entering the zone.

“In order to prevent protest, the police had arrested more than 100 people around the Kathmandu Valley,” Tibet Desk of the Human Rights Organisation of Nepal told Phayul. “The police had arrested all of these people while they were walking in the street and were not even planning to protest.”

While many of those arrested were monks, the group said that most of the monks were “actually Nepali citizens.”

It is believed that the arrests were made in anticipation of protests commemorating the fourth anniversary of the 2008 pan-Tibet uprisings, frequently portrayed by Chinese officials as the “3:14 incident.”

Tinley Lama, the Tibet Welfare Office Coordinator was also arrested yesterday from his office and taken for interrogation. HURON said Nepali police initially took him to a police station where he was kept for three hours. Later, Tinley was escorted to Hanuman Dhoka, the police headquarters of Kathmandu Valley.

He was released at around 7:40 pm yesterday after spending nearly five and a half hours in detention.

The six Tibetans who were arrested on March 10, Tibetan National Uprising Day, for carrying out protests in front of the Chinese Embassy in Kathmandu are still in jail.

They have been charged under the public offence act, according to HURON.

The six have been identified as Yeshi Choden, Kelsang Rinzin, Kelsang Choeden, Sonam Tashi, Ata Lama, and Dawa.

There are about 20,000 Tibetans refugees living in Nepal but in the last two decades, Kathmandu has refrained from issuing refugee cards, which has left an entire generation of Tibetans born or entering Nepal after 1990 with no legal identity.

The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Nepal expressed concern at the continued prevention of members of the Tibetan community from exercising their "rights to freedom of movement, assembly and association" in a report discussed at the at the ongoing UN Human Rights Council’s 19th Session in Geneva, last week.

The Nepal government, which officially follows the one-China policy has severely clamped down on the basic freedom of the Tibetans, even shutting down their main representative office in the capital.