The wind-scoured desert valley here, just south of Tibet, was once a famed transit point for the Tibetan yak caravans laden with salt that lumbered over the icy ramparts of the Himalayas. In the 1960s, it became a base for Tibetan guerrillas trained by the C.I.A. to attack Chinese troops occupying their homeland.

These days, it is the Chinese who are showing up in this far tip of the Buddhist kingdom of Mustang, northwest of Katmandu, Nepal. Chinese officials are seeking to stem the flow of disaffected Tibetans fleeing to Nepal and to enlist the help of the Nepalese authorities in cracking down on the political activities of the 20,000 Tibetans already here.

[…] For decades, there had been an understanding that Nepalese border guards would allow refugees they encountered to continue on to sanctuary. But now Tibetans suspect that the low numbers of refugees reaching Katmandu could be in part a result of guards sending back Tibetans they catch, especially since China is now involved in border security training programs.

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According to the exile base of the Kirti Monastery in Dharamshala, Lobsang Namgyal set himself ablaze near the local police building in Zoege at around 6 am (local time). He passed away at the scene of his protest.

“Lobsang Namgyal, engulfed in flames, shouted slogans for the long life of His Holiness the Dalai Lama as he ran towards the local police building,” Kirti Monastery said in a release citing sources in the region.

[…] “Chinese security personnel bundled away his body from the site and carried out his cremation without informing his family members,” Kirti Monastery said. “Only his ashes were handed over.”

In September 2012, Lobsang Namgyal had all of a sudden gone missing for two weeks prompting frantic searches from his family members and friends. It was later found out that he was taken into custody by Chinese security personnel for unknown reasons.

Coincidentally or otherwise, news of this 100th self-immolation emerged on the 100th anniversary of the Dalai Lama’s Tibetan Proclamation of Independence, after a ten-day delay. The organization Free Tibet reported that fear of reprisals from Chinese authorities had slowed confirmation of the event, and that Lobsang Namgyal’s family members have been followed and subjected to phone tapping or detention since his death. Authorities have detained dozens of Tibetans accused of involvement in earlier protests, while others have already received lengthy prison sentences. Other measures include travel restrictions and the confiscation of televisions and satellite dishes, aimed at controlling the flow of information: the delayed news of Lobsang Namgyal’s death, and reports that a Tibetan woman set fire to herself in Beijing in a previously unknown case as long ago as last September, suggest some success in this.

The protests and crackdown have dampened celebrations of Losar, the Tibetan lunar new year, which Tibetan prime-minister-in-exile Lobsang Sangay suggested should be marked by prayer instead of festivities. From Ben Blanchard at Reuters:

The Tibetan lunar new year is supposed to be a time for celebration, but many Tibetans who spoke to Reuters in Xiahe said there would be no entertainment this year.

“It really isn’t appropriate because of the self-immolations. So we’re not marking the new year,” said a Tibetan man who gave his name as Dorje. “In Tibet you don’t celebrate new year if you are in mourning.”

[…] Tibetan areas in China have been largely closed to foreign reporters and put under heavy security, making an independent assessment of the situation there hard.

Many of the monks said they were too scared to talk publicly about the Tibet issue. “I’m terrified. People have no idea how bad things are here,” said one monk.

The Associated Press described the self-immolation in Kathmandu on Wednesday:

Witnesses in Nepal said a man in monk’s robes entered a cafe in Katmandu’s Boudhanath district–home to many Tibetan Buddhist temples and monasteries–and asked to use the bathroom. After spending some time there, he went into the street and lit himself on fire. He ran a few steps, covered in flames and chanting slogans against China, before collapsing in front of the mammoth Boudhanath stupa, one of the holiest Buddhist sites in the country, surrounded by prayer wheels and decorated with colorful streams of flitting prayer flags.

Police official Keshav Adhikari said police and residents were able to put out the flames and rush the man to a hospital. Dozens of baton-wielding police surrounded the hospital where the man lay in critical condition. Adhikari said the man had yet to be identified, but appeared to be about 21 years old.

[…] Prasant Tamang, a waiter at the Golden Eye Cafe, said he found a gasoline bottle, a jacket and a bag in the cafe’s bathroom. Tamang said the man appeared normal and calm.

Some 20,000 Tibetan exiles live in Nepal, but some say they feel “suffocated” by growing Chinese influence. Local authorities have forbidden protests against China, and in February last year border guards reportedly turned a blind eye to plain-clothed Chinese men obstructing a CNN crew filming on the Nepalese side.

The Kathmandu protest has also been described as the 100th self-immolation, but officials from the Central Tibetan Administration told the AP that it was the 101st worldwide since 2009. This figure appears not to include Lobsang Namgyal. The International Campaign for Tibet counts five previous cases outside China’s borders since April 2008, including one earlier incident in the same part of Kathmandu. Two more possible cases within Tibet are excluded from both organizations’ tallies because accidental death could not be definitively ruled out.

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The project, set to be completed in 2019, is expected to ease the crippling power shortage in Nepal whose economy is still emerging from a decade-long civil war – conflict that scared away investors and slowed infrastructure projects.

The Chinese firm, which was to own a 75 percent stake in it while the state-owned Nepal Electricity Authority would take the rest, threatened to pull out after the parliamentary panel ordered an inquiry.

“We have now directed the government to let the Chinese company go ahead with the project but with some corrections in the agreement,” Shanta Chaudhary, chief of the parliamentary panel, said after an investigation of three weeks.

“But the project must be routed through the Nepal Investment Board as required by law,” she said without giving details.

This is one of China’s more recent attempts to build infrastructure in neighboring countries, such as the construction of a dam in Myanmar. The Washington Post adds:

The committee cited a recent Nepali legal manual on hydroelectricity to contest the government’s claim that it had power under domestic law to award hydroelectric projects without a bidding process.

The committee, however, said the project should be implemented nonetheless given Nepal’s energy needs and a desire for good relations with China. The committee directed the government to ensure the similar “procedural and legal mistakes” aren’t repeated in the future.

It also advised the government to negotiate so that Nepal’s state power utility gets 25% in the project, local residents of the project area 10% and domestic industrialists and other residents 14%.

On Feb. 29, China Three Gorges and Nepal’s Ministry of Energy signed an agreement for the project on the Seti River in northwestern Nepal. Nepal’s state power utility would hold 25% and the Chinese company the rest. The two sides have agreed to complete the project by December 2019. Nepal is hoping to tap huge hydroelectric potential from its fast-flowing Himalayan river system and the 750-megawatt hydroelectric dam and power project is key to these ambitions. The development is one of a suite of overseas infrastructure projects that China’s state-owned companies are undertaking.

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For decades, Nepal has been a safe haven for Tibetans fleeing China but activists say their people’s peaceful existence is at threat because of Beijing’s growing influence over its Himalayan neighbour ….

In February, Nepal police arrested 13 students protesting in front of the United Nations headquarters in Kathmandu, releasing them only after they had spent two weeks in jail.

“They were just taking part in a human rights protest and they were arrested. Before, when people got arrested they would be released on the same night,” said Dolma, who has been detained twice in recent months.

“We get information that they got orders from China to be kept in detention for so long.”

Last month, a CNN team was harassed on the Nepalese side of the border by plain-clothed Chinese men while reporting on the same issue, as Nepalese guards looked on.

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“Since China has given Nepal a lot of money, the Nepali government doesn’t let Tibetans do much of anything. They don’t let us gather to mourn, or protest. They even pick up Tibetans while they are walking on the street and send them to jail,” Sonam Choden alleged.

The video report includes scenes of a near-scuffle on the Nepalese side of the border between the CNN crew and plain-clothed Chinese men. The incident recalls recent attacks on journalists in and around the Zhejiang village of Panhe.

We were approached by several men in plain clothes, who put their hands over the camera as we tried to film on the border. The men were speaking Chinese to one another and were clearly on the Nepalese side of the border.

Nepal’s border police were also there. Their security forces had warned us that if the uniformed Chinese police came over the bridge, we’d better watch out because our camera would likely get broken.

However, the Nepalese forces didn’t try to stop us from filming; nor did they stop the Chinese men from following us deep into Nepal’s territory.

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…Nepal has become the subject of a high stakes battle for influence between China, which occupies Tibet on Nepal’s northern border, and India, which surrounds the country on all other sides. Nepal’s current prime minister, Baburam Bhattarai, sent a signal by making his first trip abroad to Delhi last month, and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will visit next year. But Chinese officials have responded with a full-court press of their own: Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan airport has seen a steady stream of Chinese officials, including the head of China’s People’s Liberation Army, who inked a $20 million military-aid deal with the Nepalese army. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, for his part, will visit Nepal in December.

At this stage it’s unclear who will prevail in this Sino-Indian struggle for influence, but one issue that is shaping up to be an important bellwether is Nepal’s role as a haven and way station for Tibetan refugees. In recent months China has set its sights on closing off this avenue to Tibetans, and it has stepped up the pressure it exerts on Nepal accordingly. India, which provides a home for the Dalai Lama and the democratic, exile government of Tibet, has a strategic stake in seeing Nepal stand up to Chinese pressure. How Nepal responds to China’s aggressive new campaign to cut off aid for Tibetans will indicate just how much influence the Chinese have in Kathmandu.

Meanwhile, boundary negotiations between China and India have been called off, according to reports in the Indian media. From the Indian Express:

The India-China boundary talks were called off after Beijing asked New Delhi to defer a Buddhist congregation where the Dalai Lama was to deliver the valedictory address next Wednesday. This, sources said, was also provoked by a covert Indian effort to get Buddhist delegates from China to attend this meet.

The narrative, however, is a bit more complicated. It started with a clash of dates that no one on the Indian side seemed to have noticed, and ended with the sudden calling-off yesterday of a scheduled two-day conversation between Indian and Chinese special representatives (SRs) on the boundary question.

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The Himalayan nation of Nepal is tightening restrictions against an estimated 20,000 Tibetan refugees because of pressure from China, the new prime minister of the Tibetan exile administration said.

On Tibetan issues, “Nepal has become almost a satellite state of China,” Lobsang Sangay, who last week took over political leadership of the Tibetan exile movement from the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s Buddhist spiritual leader, said in an interview Aug. 17 in New Delhi.

Nepal’s border with Tibet, which includes Mt. Everest, the world’s highest peak, has been a primary escape route for many of the Tibetans who have fled Chinese rule to form an exile community of about 130,000 people. Since 2008, China has cracked down on Tibetans’ protests in their homeland and tightened its border to prevent refugees from escaping.

Source:
Tibetan Exile Leader Says Nepal Curbs Refugees at China’s Behest. Bloomberg

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Less than a fortnight after a Chinese nongovernmental organisation announced its plan for what amounted to a virtual takeover of Lumbini, the birthplace of the Buddha in Nepal, Nepal’s government on Thursday unceremoniously rejected it, saying it would not entertain any deal struck in a third country without the participation of the actual stakeholders.

“Nepal is the actual stakeholder,” said Modraj Dottel, spokesperson of Nepal’s culture ministry that governs Lumbini, the town in southern Nepal that is the destination of thousands of pilgrims and Buddhist scholars worldwide, and a Unesco-declared World Heritage Site. “How can we own a deal struck in a third country without the formal consent of the actual stakeholder?” […]

Since the announcement of the MoU, the Foundation has been under media glare in Nepal, which has been less than flattering. The Nepali media has specially highlighted the fact that the Foundation’s members include Maoist chief Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda and his bete noir, ousted crown prince Paras Bir Bikram Shah.

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The organization behind the project is called the Asia Pacific Exchange and Cooperation Foundation (APECF), a quasi-governmental non-governmental organisation. Its executive vice president, Xiao Wunan, is a member of the Communist Party and holds a position at the National Development and Reform Commission, a state agency.

On Friday, APECF held a signing ceremony for the project with the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO).

With the backing of the UN, Xiao has said he hopes Lumbini will bring together all three schools of the faith: the Mahayana as practised in China, Japan, and South Korea; the Hinayana as practiced in Southeast Asia; and Tibetan Buddhism.

Indeed, the APECF says it has already received full support from Buddhists representing all three schools. With one exception. Apparently, no one from the Lumbini project has reached out to the Dalai Lama’s office.

The Dalai Lama, head of the Gelug, or “Yellow Hat” branch of Buddhism, is spiritual leader to millions of Buddhists around the world. This would make him a top candidate for involvement in the Lumbini project. But he’s also China’s enemy. Is it even fathomable that China would allow the Dalai Lama to traipse around Lumbini’s grounds after building the place at a cost of $3bn?

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It is not every day that the military chief of the world’s emerging superpower stops by a tiny Himalayan nation. So when General Chen Bingde, Chief of General Staff of China’s People’s Liberation Army, touched down in Kathmandu on March 23, all of Nepal was watching. Chen didn’t disappoint: he signed a military-aid deal worth $20 million and promised that there was more to come. He also took the chance to comment on Chinese-Nepali relations, saying that ties between the two countries are important to “world peace and the Asia-Pacific region.”

Referencing the Asia-Pacific region on a three-day visit to South Asia might seem odd — but it wasn’t accidental. Chen’s comments reflect China’s not-so-subtle effort to solidify its territorial claims and enhance its regional influence. Though Nepal is tiny, with a population (about 28 million) that barely exceeds those of the Middle Kingdom’s largest cities, China sees it as an ally on sensitive, geostrategic issues like India and Tibet. Nepal’s government, meanwhile, seems eager to embrace its new patron. Twenty million is a trifle to China but means a lot to Nepal’s war-weary army. By the time Chen left, the country’s Maoist-backed leader, Jhalanath Khanal, vowed once again that there would be no “anti-Chinese activities” on Nepal’s soil.

These moves are seen in Nepal as evidence of Beijing’s growing sway among Kathmandu’s ruling elite. Indeed, the current Maoist–United Marxist-Leninist coalition government, which replaced the former pro-Indian government, is widely seen as pro-China. Kumar says the Chinese want to forge an alliance with Nepal’s army because “it is the only reliable and strong institution, untarnished and untainted, and in which external penetration is still low.” Professor S.D. Muni, a visiting fellow at the National University of Singapore, attributes China’s upper hand in Nepal to its pragmatism. “Beijing does not have any serious emotional or cultural bonds with Nepal like India does. It can therefore relate itself with any political force in control of Nepal, be it Maoists or the army,” he says. The mighty Himalayas may have once been a natural border between the Middle Kingdom and Nepal. As China looks west, that’s no longer true.

SINDHUPALCHOK: Chinese security officials have requested the Nepali counterparts in the bordering district of Sindhupalchok to bar Tibetans from entering Nepal, fearing that the latter might resort to anti-China activities in the name of marking the 52nd anniversary of Dalai Lama’s exile.

At a meeting held in Khasa, the Chinese side informed the Nepali authorities that Tibetans had decided to celebrate the exile anniversary tomorrow.

Chief District Officer Bishnu Kumar Karki, a member of the Nepali team that attended the meeting, assured the Chinese that they will not let anyone use the Nepali territory for anti-China activities. CDO Karki described the meeting with Chinese officials as informal.

“They urged us not to allow anti-Chinese activities in our soil. No decision was taken at the meeting,” he said. Chinese security officials hold a series of meetings with Nepali officials in February-March with a request to prevent Tibetans from conducting anti-Chinese activities using Nepal, according to Karki.

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Early this month, after 17 attempts to name a prime minister, reflecting Nepal’s political paralysis, Jhalnath Khanal was picked for the post. Among the many challenges facing the new leader is balancing relations with the two neighbors.

“My government will deepen and strengthen the relationship with both” India and China, Khanal said shortly after his election. . “I haven’t decided yet” which country to visit first.

For much of its history, Nepal has been heavily influenced by India. Four million Nepalese work in India. And a long, porous border, shared religious traditions and a common history under the British Empire have bound the two.

Contact with China was long impeded by the 30,000-foot Himalayan peaks to the north.

But an ascending Middle Kingdom is changing the equation, making India anxious.

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For years, Nepal never bothered too much with policing its northern border with China. The Himalayas seemed a formidable enough barrier, and Nepal’s political and economic attention was oriented south toward India. If Nepal was a mouse trapped between elephants, as the local saying went, the elephant that mattered most was India… As Nepal’s home minister, Bhim Rawal, met with China’s top security officials, Chinese state media reported that the two countries had agreed to cooperate on border security, while Nepal restated its commitment to preventing any “anti-China” events on its side of the border.

Details of the meetings were not yet known, but the two countries were expected to finalize a program under which China would provide money, training and logistical support to help Nepal expand police checkpoints in isolated regions of its northern border.

The reason for the deal is simple: Tibet… If it once regarded Nepal with intermittent interest, China is now exerting itself more broadly toward its small Himalayan neighbor, analysts say — partly because of its concern that Nepal could become a locus of Tibetan agitation, partly as another South Asian stage in its growing soft-power fencing match in the region with India.

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Nepal is home to the world’s second-largest Tibetan exile community after India. Buddhist prayer flags flutter along Kathmandu’s alleyways and in its markets. Some of the world’s most celebrated stupas — whitewashed temples resembling enormous birthday cakes crossed with spaceships — draw Buddhist monks and nuns and foreign tourists to the city’s crowded squares. Recordings of the Buddhist mantra “Om mani padme hum,” played by shopkeepers, echo through the narrow streets.

Since a wave of protests against Chinese rule that began in Tibet in March 2008, Nepal has been under increasing pressure from Beijing to take sterner measures against pro-Tibet demonstrations here, according to diplomats, government officials and human rights workers. A recent press statement by Nepal’s Ministry of Home Affairs appears to support the tougher stance: “Nepal stands firm not to allow any external forces to use its soil against its neighbors and it sticks to its One China policy.”

China accuses the Dalai Lama, the Buddhist spiritual leader, of trying to split Tibet from China. The Dalai Lama, who lives in exile in northern India, has said that although he desires greater autonomy for Tibet, he does not advocate independence.

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Nepal would never have come to be led by Maoists were it not for the help that the rebels got from India. For decades, Maoist guerrillas took refuge in India’s eastern states of West Bengal and Bihar, given sanctuary by an indulgent Indian administration.

Later, the Maoists’ numerous contacts within the Indian security establishment ensured New Delhi’s help in emasculating Nepal’s monarchy – according to courtiers within Kathmandu’s Narayanhiti Palace, because the Nepali king and Sonia Gandhi disliked each other – and subsequently nudged the Nepali Congress into joining a government led by the guerrilla fighters.

Since then things have shifted. China has characteristically reversed its earlier policy of backing the monarchy, and has become the most significant international backer of Nepal’s version of the Peoples Liberation Army. This is causing increasing disquiet in India, which – foolishly – has an open border with Nepal.

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Chinese ambassador to Nepal Qiu Guohong recently announced an increase in financial support to Nepal, though the details are still unknown. The announcement precedes a visit to Nepal by Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi, who has not yet visited Nepal and will lead a 15-member delegation for a three-day trip. In September, the Chinese announced military support for Nepal. Additionally:

The Chinese government has already connected Nepal with its optical fibre network and has announced to extend its railway network from Lhasa to Kathmandu immediately.

For more information on Nepal, please see the following China Digital Times articles:

Elevate China-Nepal Ties to New High: Prachanda

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