China curbs: Number of Tibetans touring India sees a sharp dip
DHARAMSHALA : Owing to travel restrictions imposed by China, the number of Tibetans touring India to attend the teaching sessions of spiritual leader Dalai Lama have taken a sharp dip.
According to the Tibetan government-in-exile, officially called the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA), and Tibetan media reports, barely 100 Tibetans were a part of the recently concluded teaching tour at Bodhgaya in Bihar in December last year.
The number is in striking contrast to the count two to three years back when over thousands of Tibetans visited the country, said CTA Information and International Relations Department (DIIR) secretary Sonam Dagpo. with the deadline, their passports were confiscated and never returned, he added. According to report published by Human Rights Watch (HRW), China introduced a two separate track systems for issuing passports in 2002. The first system is available in areas which are largely populated by the country’s ethnic Chinese majority while the other system is said to be slow in issuing passport. It is also alleged that under the latter system, the passport is either denied or issued after a prolonged delay lasting several year for religious minorities like Tibetans and Uyghur.
In 2017, only 80 Tibetans arrived at Tibetan Reception Centre, the main refugee transit centre in Dharamsala. The facility was meant to be a transit stop for the over 2500 Tibetans who every year clandestinely crossed over high mountains from China into Nepal and then onto Dharamshala, the home of Dalai Lama, since fleeing Tibet in 1959.