Nepal detained man for posing with Tibetan flag on Facebook

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Adak.
Adak. (Photo courtesy: Tibet Journal)

(TibetanReview.net, Mar30, 2018) – Police in Nepal’s capital kathmandu detained and threatened to deport earlier this month a Tibetan man for having posted on Facebook a photo of himself with a Tibetan national flag and writing to embassies in Kathmandu about human rights concerns in Tibet, said Washington-based International Campaign For Tibet (ICT) Mar 28 and others. The experience has led Adak, a man in his early 40s, to remark that “the situation for Tibetans in Nepal is almost the same as for Tibetans in Tibet.”

He has said that three days after posting the image on Facebook, he was accosted by Nepalese police near the Boudha stupa. They slapped and kicked him as they took him into custody after confirming his posting. The detention lasted 10 days, during which police threatened to deport him to Tibet.

Adak was released on Mar 22 after the Nepalese human rights organization HURON and others intervened on his behalf. They pleaded with the Nepalese police and undertook to send him out of Nepal so there was no need to deport him, he said in an interview with the Voice of Tibet (Oslo) Tibetan-language radio broadcast service Mar 29.

Adak is a member of a small group of Tibetans, called the Tibetan Volunteers Group,which held peaceful protests from 2008 in response to the violent crackdown following the wave of mostly peaceful protests that spread across the Tibetan Plateau. He had also taken photographs of police at a nearby Buddhist monastery, according to HURON.

Adak did not know how the Nepalese police learnt about the photo on Facebook, but believes it a result of Chinese involvement.

Following his release, Adak needed to be hospitalised and put on a glucose drip. He has since left Nepal for India for the duration of the politically sensitive month of March.

Adak has said it had become too dangerous for his group to carry out any form of peaceful protest especially over the past three years due to China’s ever growing influence in Nepal.

His group’s letter to the embassies expressed distress and concern at the deteriorating human rights situation in Tibet at the time of the Mar10 anniversary of the 1959 Uprising and 2008 protests. It raised the case of the Tibetan language advocate Tashi Wangchuk who is presently awaiting verdict for alleged incitement of separatism.

ICT says there is direct correlation between China’s deepening investment and aid in Nepal and the vulnerabilities of Tibetans living in the country. It says Beijing openly describes these in its official media as a reward to Nepal for its “important role in guarding against Tibetan separatists”.

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