Political Exclusion and Othering of Tibetan Refugees in Nepal
Course: POLSCI 264S-01 Democratic Erosion, Duke University
Instructor: Jason D. Todd
Peer Editors: Yihan Shi
“We have our own values regarding the policy on refugees. Our policies are guided by geopolitical sensitivities.”
— Deputy prime minister and foreign minister Narayan Kaji Shrestha
“Tibetans who have crossed the border illegally are not refugees.”
— A spokesperson of the Chinese embassy in Kathmandu
“I thought I would be safe here. But now I realize China is telling Nepal what to do about us.”
— Tibetan refugee Dorje Tsering, Kathmandu
(Quotes cited from Human Rights Watch)
Nepal is now home to over 20,000 Tibetan refugees and descendants fleeing from the Chinese-controlled Tibetan Plateau, a majority of whom followed the Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama and became refugees in the 1960s. According to the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board and the U.S. Department of State, many of them integrate well into local Nepal society and culture and have basic economic and cultural rights. However, in the past 30 years, a large number of Tibetans in Nepal are denied adequate identification documents, deliberately disfranchised, and deprived of basic political rights and access to political life. This was primarily due to the political pressure from Beijing, expecting to crack down Tibetan separatist movements. Sadly, this already rigorous political exclusion and othering of the Tibetan community was further aggravated by the democratic erosions in Nepal.
Undocumented
“Without any form of identification paper, I don’t know where I belong. There is no future for me in Nepal,” said Palden Lama in an interview with Integrated Regional Information Networks (now The New Humanitarian). He was born to Tibetan parents in the refugee settlement in Pokhara, Nepal. He has lived his entire life in Nepal without an adequate identification document.
Nepal is not party to the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugeesor its 1967 protocol, nor does it have any domestic law regarding refugees or asylum seekers. The only type of documentation that was issued by the Nepali government to Tibetan refugees is the Refugee Identity Card (RIC). According to Refworld, a subsidiary of the U.N. Refugee Agency, the RIC merely grants the refugees with legal rights to remain in Nepal. The economic, social, and cultural rights as well as basic civil liberties recognized in the 1951 Refugee Convention are not guaranteed, let alone the right and access to political life. Unfortunately, after 1989, the government reportedly no longer issues the RIC to Tibetan refugees due to Beijing’s political pressure.
Furthermore, a considerable number of Tibetan refugees living near the China-Nepal border have been categorized separately as “border citizens”, according to a research by Sara B. Shneiderman. Similarly, the border citizens lack of appropriate documentations and are ambiguous on their citizenship status. This creates legal vacuum and loopholes, benefiting both Nepal and China to exclude them from participating in their domestic political life in the form of deliberate disenfranchisement.
The Nepali nationality law does not automatically grant citizenship to Nepali-born descendants of Tibetan refugee parents, unless the parents have obtained Nepali citizenships by naturalization which requires proof of land or house ownership.
Suppressed
Many Tibetans fled from China in the hope of freedom to political engagement and civil liberties, only to find another dystopia where democracy is being eroded and political violence prevailed, including surveillance, intimidation, detention, and ill-treatment.
Most Tibetans refugees in Nepal are pro-Tibetan-separatist and opposing the Communist Party of China’s governance in Tibet. Nepal has always been a focal point of pro-Tibetan civil movements and activisms, notably during the 2008 Tibetan unrest. As a result, starting from the 1990s, China has been pressuring Kathmandu to control and restrain the “anti-China” separatist movements in Nepal, primarily those initiated or supported by the Tibetan refugees. For many times, Chinese diplomats and government officials openly deny those Tibetans as refugees or asylum seekers, rather lawbreakers who “illegally cross the border”. China has also explicitly requested Nepal to “enforce de-facto bans on pro-Tibetan political mobilization in Nepal” and “monitor and infiltrate Tibetan communities living in Nepal” for China’s security interests, according to Human Rights Watch.
Being denied citizenship or refugee status, Tibetans in Nepal are not entitled to participate in political affairs. This includes increasingly rigorous exclusion from or prohibition of elections, referendums, free associations, and even free expressions. In addition, law enforcement officials occasionally intimidate, detain, arrest, and even torture Tibetan refugees during “politically sensitive periods”. As of 2008, there were 4,000 police officers in Kathmandu Valley area alone being deployed against “Tibetan Independence”. There was even an Nepal-China extradition treaty regarding Tibetan refugees being proposed prior to Xi Jinping’s visit to Nepal in October 2019, reported by International Campaign for Tibet.
Unsupported
The Nepal Communist Party has been demonstrating a strong pro-China stance through many efforts. It is reported that Nepali officials and leaders have been trained on “Xi Jinping Thoughts”. Undoubtedly, the efforts also involve the continuous denial of Tibetans’ citizenship or refugee status and the strengthened political violence towards Tibetans and their civil movements, which are requested by Chinese diplomats and officials in cracking down the Tibetan separatist movements. As a result, the Tibetan community in Nepal forms a crucial opposition of the incumbent communist party.
The erosion of democratic institutions through the NCP’s control of both national and subnational level legislatures and judiciary systems exacerbate the government’s exclusion and suppression of the Tibetans in Nepal. Local legislators are less incentivized to support the Tibetan community as well as their civil movements, since it faces hostility and even punishment from Beijing, and it does not raise their approval rate. The justice system might also rule in favor of the government due to the NCP’s strong influence over the judiciary and unjust refugee and immigration laws. Therefore, it’s increasingly hard for the Tibetan community to draw attention and acquire support from the political sphere, which only leads to further exclusion and othering.
Moreover, the erosion of democratic norms in Nepal such as the decreasing social impact of free medias deepens the exclusion and othering of the Tibetan community. Most domestic Nepali medias are reluctant to engage in this systematic exclusion, in fear of censorship and political violence, rather describing the Tibetan activists and monasteries as “serious national security threats” against China. This makes it much more challenging for the public to side with the Tibetans in Nepal.
In fact, this political exclusion and othering can also contribute to furthering the democratic erosion in Nepal, creating a deadlock of progressive deterioration. The nonrepresentation of Tibetans in Nepal’s legislature and other political sectors would compel them to engage in more radical resistance, which would apparently cause deeper social cleavage and instability. Besides, the exclusion itself sets a dangerous precedent for the government to expel any community out of politics by institutional discrimination, disenfranchisement, and criminalization.
“I can assure you that they (Tibetans) won’t be able to stir up trouble here… They should stay out of politics… ,” said the Nepali Deputy Inspector General of Police during a 2008 interview with the Global Times, “the West camouflaged the Tibetan issue now and coated it with ‘human rights’ and ‘freedom of religion’… All nonsense…”
