Police detained a handful of Tibetans who tried to block a convoy of Chinese officials with a rowdy protest in the Nepalese capital yesterday.
About a dozen protesters jumped into the street waving Tibetan flags and chanting slogans against Chinese rule in Tibet just as the convoy of cars carrying the 18 Chinese officials left their hotel in Kathmandu.
“We want free Tibet,” the protesters chanted.
PHOTO: AFP
Police escorting the officials quickly stopped the protesters and took to a police station where they were detained.
Police official Sukra Chetri said seven Tibetans were detained but could not say if the protesters would be arrested or charged with violating a Nepalese law designed specifically to deter such demonstrations.
Yesterday’s protest came a day after Nepalese Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal pledged to the visiting Chinese that there would be no more Tibetan protests in Nepal. The Chinese officials are in Nepal to on a weeklong goodwill visit.
Thousands of Tibetan exiles live in Nepal, and thousands more are allowed to pass through the country on their way to Dharmasala, India, where the Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama lives in exile.
Some Tibetans have regularly protested in Nepal since last year against Chinese rule in Tibet. The government last year banned such protests and threatened that those involved would be deported. But no one has been deported under the ban, and protesters are usually freed after a day in police custody.
The protests are a source of embarrassment to Nepal’s communist-led government, which wants strong ties with China.
Beijing has repeatedly asked Nepal to better control the Tibetan refugees within its borders and stop the protests.
China claims Tibet has always been part of its territory, but many Tibetans say the Himalayan region was virtually independent for centuries until Chinese troops invaded in the 1950s.
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