China is paying Nepalese police officers to hand over escaping Tibetans back to China, shows a cable from the U.S. Embassy in India, according to whistle-blower site WikiLeaks.
The cable, from Feb. 22, speaks of 2,500–3,500 Tibetan refugees arriving in Dharamsala every year. Out of these, since 1980, almost half remain in the country.
The cable states that in the period between April 2008 and March 2009, only 650 refugees arrived in Dharamsala. This period is right after bloody riots in Lhasa in March 2008, months before the Olympic Games were to be held in China.
According to the cable, an anonymous person (their identity obscured by WikiLeaks) stated that Beijing probably asked Kathmandu to step up border patrols to make it more difficult for Tibetans to enter Nepal.
The cable states "The Chinese government rewards (Nepali forces) by providing financial incentives to officers who hand over Tibetans attempting to exit China.” According to AFP, a Nepalese police spokesman “denied the allegations, calling them ‘baseless.’”
Since China invaded Tibet in 1959, over a million Tibetans have been killed, according to the Tibetan government-in-exile. Ever since, Tibetan monks, oppressed in their home, have tried to escape to India’s Dharamsala, where their leader, the Dalai Lama, has taken refuge.
