I just got back from the border at Kodari watching the deportation of the prisoners. I got a call from the Tibetan community leaders here this morning at 6:30 to say the deportation was taking place as we feared. He asked us to try to get to the border to take photos if we could, and we took a photographer with us and set off as fast as we could.
On the way we heard that the prisoners were being switched from a police van to another vehicle at a place called the Police Club, and we got there just as they were being driven out in the new van, a modern, nondescript Toyota minibus with no plates. We wouldn’t have known at all that this was the bus with the prisoners if a Tibetan lady, the only other person there, hadn’t thrown herself screaming on the ground in front of the bus to try to stop it leaving. That gave us time to get to the bus, take some pictures, and to get into our car and follow them.
Between us and the prisoners was a smart Chinese Embassy SUV with a Chinese official, a driver and a Nepalese official in plain clothes (I spoke to him later, he was a sour suspicious person, treated by the Nepalese as a senior officer, though he told me in Hindi that he was a tourist on holiday at the border). We followed the convoy without being noticed for about 60 kms and then lost them; we were in a much slower vehicle and the roads higher up in the mountains towards the border were very rough. When we saw them again they had added a third vehicle, a commercial Nepalese truck with about 20 or so Nepalese police traveling as an escort, some of them armed.
No-one else was up there at Kodari, the border town, besides local villagers and truck drivers. We were arrived there ahead of the convoy, and it was already tense on the Chinese side, with lots of People’s Armed Police moving around doing exercises energetically and carrying out little training exercises at their barracks on the far side of the river. A little posse in partial riot gear was sent running down to the Friendship Bridge to chase me off when they saw me walking over the bridge. Half an hour later I saw a big Chinese police vehicle with Lhasa plates arrive on the Nepali side, with heavy-set officials, Tibetan and Chinese, who got out to talk to the Nepalese immigration staff.
Then the Chinese Embassy escort vehicle arrived with the Chinese official and his Nepalese liaison. I heard the sounds of horns blaring, and turned to see the prisoners’ bus trying to race up the road towards the bridge. We couldn’t see easily inside because the windows were tinted, and at least on our side, there were Nepalese police sitting between each row of prisoners and the window. So it was hard to see the prisoners, and it all happened so quickly. There was some commotion as the bus passed with its lights on and horns blaring, with the armed escort behind it, and all the local people running after to see what would happen. But the bus went straight through all the Nepalese check posts and over the bridge without stopping till it was safe on the Chinese side.
There some officials put on their anti SARS white coats and briefly got on and off the bus to conduct some cursory health check, and then the bus was moved out of sight behind some building. The Chinese officials followed it across in the SUV. It was about 1225 local time.
We couldn’t see what happened there, but the police escorts must have been changed, because after an hour or so the Nepalese police came back across the bridge. There were about 25 or 30 of them, some five or so with rifles. One was carrying a gift that one of the others said the Chinese had given them – a big cardboard box probably full of beer. One was carrying shiny new bright green nylon rope. Another one, in plain clothes, was carrying about 10 sets of handcuffs; they must have been heavy because after a while he draped them round his neck rather than carry them. Presumably these had been used for shackling the prisoners on the five hour drive from Kathmandu.
A couple of the more senior officers among these Nepalese police told us that they were sorry and were just doing their duty.
We saw the prisoners being driven away up the Chinese side of gorge towards Zhangmu, with the police escort vehicles.
It was a crushingly depressing experience.
Thanks so much for what you have been doing over there, and for keeping in touch with us during the day. I’ll be sorting out photos and things, if anyone needs anything urgently.
Best,
RB
