LHASA, August 25 — China has allowed 18 Tibetans deported from Nepal in May to return to their everyday lives of farming and herding, a top Chinese official in the restive region said on Monday.
The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said at the time that the deportations violated international refugee law, by expelling people to a country where their rights may be abused.
China’s Foreign Ministry said the 18 had been repatriated in line with international law after entering Nepal illegally.
”If they were farmers, they’re farmers now. If they were nomads, they’re nomads now,” the governor of the Tibet Autonomous Region, Jampa Phuntsog, said at a news conference in Lhasa.
”This shows that we did not take forceful measures,” he said.
Nepal deported the Tibetans to China in late May, the biggest group to be sent back for several years, attracting strong criticism from the U.N. refugee agency, the United States and Tibetan rights groups.
There had been no information since on their fate.
Tibetans often cross the ill-defined and remote border with Nepal in the rugged Himalayas. Nepal usually hands them to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, which resettles most of them in neighbouring India, home to the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, and a large Tibetan community.
Jampa Phuntsog said the deportations were not a political issue and called pressure from the international community ”inappropriate.”
He added that the 18, repatriated during the deadly SARS outbreak, were quarantined for a time upon re-entering China because five of them had fevers.
(Reporting by John Ruwitch; editing by Jonathan Ansfield;
Reuters Messaging: john.ruwitch.reuters.com+reuters.net; +8610 6586-5566 x202)
