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Tibetan
children face punishment for studying in India
By
Sudeshna Sarkar
Indo-Asian News
Service
Kathmandu,
Sep 23 (IANS) Thousands of Tibetan children and their families
face stiff punishment at the hands of the Chinese government
for enrolling in schools in India run by the Tibetan government
in exile headed by their spiritual leader the Dalai Lama,
a rights body said.
The
Washington-headquartered International Campaign for Tibet
(ICT) has expressed its misgivings as the ultimatum issued
by the Communist Party of China authorities to the Tibetan
Party and government workers expired last week.
In
July, Communist Party authorities in the Tibet Autonomous
Region had issued a directive stating that Tibetan children
must confess if they have been to schools in India and whether
they believed anything they had been taught there, the ICT
said in a statement issued late Monday.
Similar
though less stringent measures were imposed in the mid-1990s.
The measures, issued by the Tibet Autonomous Region Party
Committee Discipline Department, state that children who return
from schools in exile and parents who fail to bring children
back to Tibet could face unspecified "disciplinary action".
Every
year, hundreds of young children are smuggled out of Tibet
to Dharamsala town in north India, the home of the Dalai Lama,
to receive the religious education that they are denied by
communist China in their own homeland.
To
manage the escape, young children trek across high and often
dangerous snowy mountain passes to reach Nepal, facing the
danger of being arrested or even shot on the way.
The
Chinese warning comes even as Beijing stepped up its campaign
in Nepal alleging that the Dalai Lama's supporters were luring
away young children of Tibetan origin from Nepal with false
promises to indoctrinate them and press them into his services,
an allegation that was rejected by the Tibetan government
in exile.
The
new government of Nepal headed by the Maoists has also begun
reiterating its support for the One China policy, which regards
Tibet as an inalienable part of the Chinese republic.
Nepal,
that had in the past allowed thousands of Tibetan refugees
to take up residence in the country, this month began cracking
down on them.
The
new government of Nepal has pledged to hand over all Tibetan
refugees who do not possess valid travel documents or the
identity cards issued by Nepal to the UN's refugee care agency
and make them leave Nepal.
New
Nepali Home Minister Bandev Gautam Monday reasserted that
Nepal would not allow its soil to be used for activities against
its friendly neighbour China.
The
crackdown comes after Tibetans began staging protests against
the Chinese government since March and kept the demonstrations
up, embarrassing Beijing especially on the eve of the Olympic
Games.
Indo-Asian
News Service
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