Dragon to succeed where Delhi failed in Nepal?

KATHMANDU: Three years ago, when Nepal’s King Gyanendra angered India by staging a coup and seizing absolute power, New Delhi brought the king’s arch enemy, the Maoist guerrillas, and the opposition parties together for a united pro-democracy movement that toppled the Himalayan kingdom’s 239-year-old institution of monarchy.

Three years later, is Nepal’s northern neighbour China going to play a similar role and end a political impasse in the nascent republic that New Delhi has failed to resolve?

Maoist chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda, who created a controversy last year when he chose to visit China first after becoming republic Nepal’s first premier, is set to trigger a fresh controversy. According to his aides, the former revolutionary will leave for China Sunday for a week-long visit during which he is scheduled to hold talks with Chinese President Hu Jintao.

Prachanda will be accompanied by Maoist lawmakers Krishna Bahadur Mahara, who was former information and communications minister and is current chief of the party’s foreign affairs, and senior member Mohan Vaidya Kiran, who has been posing leadership challenges to Prachanda from time to time.

This will be Prachanda’s second visit to China since last year. After touring the neighbouring country in August 2008 to attend the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games in Beijing, Prachanda was scheduled for a follow-up visit this summer. However, he postponed it when his government became embroiled in a fight with its coalition partners over sacking the chief of the army, Gen Rookmangud Katawal. Soon after the postponement, his eight-month-old government collapsed in May and the second state visit had to be shelved.

This time however, as the leader of the chief opposition party, he is going on the invitation of Hu himself, who heads the Communist Party of China. Ironically, Prachanda’s successor, current Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal, is yet to go on an official visit to China since assuming office. Last month, his Foreign Minister Sujata Koirala went to visit Beijing to lay the ground for the prime ministerial visit. However, till now, no date has been finalised for Nepal’s China trip.

China is concerned about Nepal’s peace process having hit a snag. Beijing has asked the communist parties to work in tandem and also address the issue of the rehabilitation of the over 19,500 guerrillas of the Maoists’ People’s Liberation Army. It remains to be seen if the Chinese government will be able to propel the peace process forward. Prachanda last month avoided meeting the emissary sent by New Delhi to Kathmandu, Indian foreign secretary Nirupama Rao, by going on an unexpected trip to Hong Kong.

The Maoists however declined to comment immediately on Prachanda’s upcoming trip. Mahara told TNN that it was yet to be fully confirmed.

Hundreds of Tibetans protest in Nepal

Associated Press
Kathmandu, Nepal

Hundreds of Tibetans exiles, including Buddhist monks and nuns, protested in Nepal's capital Saturday, chanting slogans against China and demanding an end to its rule over their homeland.

The protest marked the anniversary of the date Beijing crushed a 1959 Tibetan uprising, sending the Dalai Lama over the Himalayas into exile and placing Tibet under its direct rule for the first time.

Police did not stop the 500 protesters _ who were holding candles, waving banners and chanting "Stop killing in Tibet" _ from marching for about an hour on the outskirts of Katmandu.

"We are here today to offer our prayers for those killed in Tibet and demand that the Chinese authorities stop killing and torture in Tibet," said Tashi Tshering, 35, a refugee living in Katmandu. "We are also demanding basic human rights and the release of all political prisoners in Tibet."

Nepalese police have been ordered to stop all Tibetan street protests against China, but the demonstrators avoided arrest by staying close to a Buddhist shrine.

Security was stepped up around the Chinese Embassy and visa offices, with traffic diverted from the area to prevent any protests there.

There have been few protests by Tibetans in Nepal this year. Last year, there were almost daily demonstrations against a Chinese crackdown in Tibet that followed anti-Beijing riots. Thousands of Tibetan refugees live in Nepal, while thousands more are allowed to pass through the country on their way to Dharmasala, India, where the Dalai Lama lives in exile.

Tibetan refugees in Nepal are scared

As China’s influence grows in Nepal, Tibetan refugees are feeling the pressure, SIOFRA O’DONOVAN reports for Irish Times from Kathmandu.

LIKE MOST other young Tibetans here, Dawa, a teacher in his 30s, does not have legal residence in Nepal. He arrived from Lhasa in 1991. While Tibetans who arrived in Nepal prior to 1989 are eligible for a refugee registration certificate (RC) allowing them to remain in the country, thousands live here illegally.

“I don’t like living here any more,” he admits. “I have to get home by 8pm, to avoid police questioning me.”

Dawa has travelled back to Lhasa, Tibet’s capital, regularly since he left, to see his parents. Eventually, he would like to return to Tibet. “I do have hope that Tibet will be free, but I’m not sure how much good demonstrations do for us, in Nepal.”


Tseten Norbu, a businessman and protest leader in Kathmandu’s Tibetan community is from Shigatse, western Tibet, and lives in exile in Nepal. He continues to organise campaigns to free his country from Chinese rule, despite the risk of arrest by Nepali authorities.

Eleven Tibetans were arrested in his neighbourhood before March 10th on charges of anti-China activities and have been sentenced to three months’ imprisonment. “We don’t protest against the Chinese people, only the Chinese Communist Party which is opposed to Tibetan religion and culture.”

There is increasing despair among the community here, particularly among the most vulnerable, those without papers. The Nepali government now requires that all Tibetan shops, restaurants and businesses be officially registered. To do that, you need 50,000 Nepali rupees (€500) and proper residence status in Nepal.

“I know a woman with a clothes shop who went there with her RC card and all the money. They refused to accept her documents,” says Karma Dondrup, a refugee living in Kathmandu.
To get round the problem, often Nepali citizens register businesses in their name, to help Tibetans who cannot do so.

The Himalyan Sherpa, Tamang, Dolpo, Mustang and many other ethnically Tibetan Nepali tribes sympathise with Tibetans.

They share the same devotion to the Dalai Lama, and practice Tibetan Buddhism.

Other young Tibetans are working as political activists, independently or with NGOs. Yeshe Zangpo, from Amdo, Qinghai province, came into exile in 1994 to study Tibetan in India, crossing into Nepal over the pass at Solokumbu in the Mount Everest region. “We hid in gorges by day and travelled by night.” It took 26 days to get from Lhasa to Kathmandu.

He has been editor of a political newspaper in Kathmandu since 2008. “I spoke to my brother last week at home, and he told me to stop doing this. He said I should think of their safety.” The Chinese government punishes the relatives of those they see as separatists and members of the “Dalai Clique”. “I am always afraid in Kathmandu,” he tells me, “there are so many Chinese spies here.”

Apart from restaurant, antique and clothes businesses, teaching work and a minority who undertake the more risky work of political activism, the staple work of many Tibetans in Nepal since 1970 has been in the carpet industry as weavers and dyers.

Many of these factories have now fallen victim to the global recession and problems within the Nepal Labour Union and have closed, leaving thousands of Tibetans without work.

Some enterprising young Tibetans, Damdhul and Tenzii Wangdu, have now founded Café Dream Factory, a community project that works to redress the sense of purposelessness that is endemic among the refugee youth.

The group supports young artists and musicians and their office creates employment networks for young Tibetans . While there are some 29 monasteries in the Kathmandu district of Bouda, a Tibetan enclave, only 8 to 10 per cent of the refugees in Nepal are monks or nuns.

Many of the monasteries in the enclave are owned and largely populated by ethnically Tibetan Nepali citizens but the high lamas are usually Tibetan.

Jamyang Geshe la came into exile from Kham in 1985 to study in a monastery in southern India, as most Tibetan refugee monks do. “We could not study Buddhism properly in our monastery in Tibet, there was too much political instruction. Eventually, there will be no monks left in Tibet.” He runs a Buddhist centre in Bouda.

“If we can’t learn Tibetan, we can’t read the scriptures and our religious purpose is stunted,” says Dawa Tsering, a monk who gives regular religious and political speeches in the Kathmandu area.

Asked how he felt about living in Nepal these days, he said: “We have no refugee rights here. We can’t do anything here anymore, without being scared.”

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Nepal to focus on Indian, Chinese markets to revamp tourism

Kathmandu, March 26

''We will develop cheap packages and concentrate on the regional markets in order to attract more tourists as Nepal prepares to observe "Nepal Tourism Year 2011," Tourism Minister Yami said.

Nepal's Maoist government today announced that it will focus on regional markets including India and China to revamp its tourism industry, in order to minimise the effects of global economic crisis.

"We will now focus on tourism campaigns in Indian cities and the Chinese market," Tourism Minister Hisila Yami said announcing the new tourism policy of the Himalayan nation.

In January and February this year, Nepal had 15 to 16 per cent negative growth in the overall tourist arrival by air, which is mainly attributed to the global recession, Mumbai attack and political crisis in Thailand, according to tourism experts.

The impact of global crisis was already visible in the arrival figures in 2008, which saw just 4 per cent increase as compared to previous year. However, in 2007 the tourist arrival figure saw 35 per cent growth in normal situation, the minister said.

Nepal is being developed as active economic zone instead of seeing it as a buffer zone between India and China, Tourism Minister Yami said.

"We will develop cheap packages and concentrate on the regional markets in order to attract more tourists as Nepal prepares to observe "Nepal Tourism Year 2011" to attract one million tourists, just double of the current figure, the minister pointed out.

Highlighting the new tourism policy, Yami said, village tourism and home stay tourism will be promoted, adventure tourism will get special attention and health and education tourism will also be developed as new concepts.

"To attract more Indian tourists, pilgrimage tourism will be given special focus in the coming days."

Nepal Tourism Board has recently launched special package campaign in Delhi and North Indian cities in order to attract more Indian visitors and another campaign is scheduled to be launched in Mumbai soon after national flag carrier Nepal Airlines commences direct flights between Mumbai and Kathmandu from March-end, Tourism Secretary Ramchandra Man Singh said.

Keeping in view the convenience of the visitors, Nepal government has included passenger service charge and tourist service charge in the air-ticket itself instead of charging separate amount effective from March 1, Singh said.

"Nepal Airlines will hire a new Boeing 757 to expand its capacity in international flight and an negotiations have already started with an American company," he pointed out. Nepal has recently signed Air Service Agreements with Bahrain and Sri Lanka to expand its air services and Air Service Agreements signed with India and Qatar will be reviewed in the near future in order to increase the air seat capacity in international sector, he added.

President of Hotel Association of Nepal (HAN) Prashiddha Bahadur Pandey said that due to the impact of global recession, many hotel occupancy in January and February months witnessed a decline of 25 to 30 per cent.

The government has also announced to provide Rs 10 per litre subsidy in diesel price and waived demand surcharge in electricity bills to hotel industries same as to other industries to provide relief from the economic recession.

Source: Press Trust of India