Dharamshala: - Nepal government authorities on Monday detained a group of twenty young Tibetan refugees who after several days of crossing the mountains of the occupied Himalayan region were close to the Nepal-Tibet border.
Tibetan refugees who are detained in Nepal are generally handed over to the United Nations' refugee agency. The U.N. helps them on their journey to the Indian town of Dharmshala where the Tibetan spiritual leader His Holiness the Dalai Lama lives. "The group was handed over to immigration authorities for investigation and necessary action," said Nepal authorities.
"Fifteen men and five women were detained Monday in the far western district of Bajura after they crossed the border," said Police spokesman Binod Shrestha. They are aged 18 to 21 years old and are being transported to the capital, Katmandu, according to Nepal officials.
They were arrested for not having valid permits to travel inside Nepal, according to the District Deputy Superintendent of Police, Birkha Bahadur Rawal. The authorities said Tibetans who want to travel Nepal need to have valid travel documents, according to a bilateral understanding between Nepal and China.
The Tibetan refugees informed police that they had walked more than 17 days through Tibet before entering Nepal at Humla, at the far western point of the Nepal-Tibet border.
"They walked at night and rested during the day, so it was difficult to trace them, said Rawal. "We are facing language problem while dealing with them," he said.
Nepal is the home of more than 20,000 Tibetan refugees for last fifty years. However authorities are still under heavy Chinese pressure as Nepal has firmly agreed to a "One-China" policy and works to crackdown on peaceful Tibetan movements in the country.
The China's communist regime has used its financial muscle to pay off the Nepal government to arrest Tibetan refugees who fleeing Tibet and crackdown on the refugees living in Nepal, according to secret US cables published by WikiLeaks.
