Dharamsala, July 28: Nepal has detained and forcibly handed over three fleeing Tibetan refugees to Chinese authorities in early June, the United Nations said on Wednesday, adding it was “extremely concerned” by the move, a media report said.
The UN refugee agency said it had already written to the Nepalese government about the incident.
“Three Tibetans were forcefully returned to China from Nepal in early June 2010. It is a very serious issue and we are extremely concerned,” Nini Gurung, spokeswoman for the UN refugee agency in Kathmandu, told AFP by email.
Meanwhile, the Washington-based Tibet advocacy group International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) has published a report giving the details of the incident.
Two of the repatriated refugees – a young woman and a monk – are now in jail in Tibet, ICT’s report said.
Two monks from Korchak monastery in Tibet, located close to the border with Nepal, and a woman from Shigatse, who was probably a government official, were sent back in an extraordinary way, involving flying them back in a helicopter under the escort of a Nepali politician, the report said, citing local sources.
The two monks were identified as Dawa, 20, and Dorjee, 21, while the woman was a 22-year-old identified as Penpa.
Penpa and one of the monks have been jailed and will serve around six months, ICT said, citing local sources. The other monk however has been allowed to return to the monastery.
It said the three were detained in early June by Nepalese police in Nepal’s Humla district bordering Purang (Chinese: Burang) county in Ngari prefecture, Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR).
The Chinese authorities were looking for the woman, hoping to stop her from reaching Kathmandu and travelling onward to India, ICT said.
According to the report, Chinese border police were also in touch with their Nepali counterparts and after the three were caught, they were taken by helicopter to the border, accompanied by an unidentified Nepali politician and a policeman.
This is the first confirmed case reported since 2003, when 18 Tibetans, some of them children, were detained by Nepalese police and handed over to Chinese authorities in Tibet in a move that sparked international condemnation.
