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Nepal to deploy police on Tibet border

AFP

Nepalese police arrest a Tibetan protesting against a visiting Chinese delegation in Kathmandu on 2 September 2009. Nepal is home to around 20,000 exiled Tibetans who began arriving in large numbers in 1959 when the Dalai Lama fled Tibet after a failed uprising. The government in Kathmandu has come under increasing pressure from Beijing to suppress anti-China activity on its soil.File photo/AFP/Prakash Mathema/Nepal

Nepal is to deploy armed police along its northern border with Tibet, the country’s home minister has said, days after nearly 80 Tibetans were arrested in the capital Kathmandu.

The move is part of a plan to make Nepal’s border with neighbouring China more secure, Bhim Rawal said in an interview published Sunday, but he denied the government was acting under pressure from Beijing.

“We plan to gradually deploy APF (Armed Police Force) in different points along the border. We have already deployed security forces along the Nepal-India border,” he told the Republica daily.

“It is very clear that to secure the border is in our national interests… We have to put our utmost efforts to make our border secure and efficient.”

Nepal is home to around 20,000 exiled Tibetans who began arriving in large numbers in 1959 when the Dalai Lama fled Tibet after a failed uprising.

Some 2,500 Tibetans used to make the dangerous trip from Chinese-controlled Tibet to Nepal every year on their way to India to join their exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.

But activists say the number has fallen sharply since China mobilised its military in Tibet in March 2008.

Sandwiched between India and China, Nepal supports Beijing’s “One China” policy that views Tibet as an integral part of China.

The government here has come under increasing pressure to suppress anti-China activity on its soil and activists say it has responded by adopting a harder line against the exiles.

On Thursday police in Kathmandu arrested around 80 Tibetans as they tried to stage a protest outside a Chinese embassy building to mark the 60th anniversary of communist rule.

Copyright © 2009 AFP

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