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Fewer fleeing to Dalai Lama

Source: AFP,26 July,2010

 DHARAMSHALA (India) - THE Tibetan community in exile headed by the Dalai Lama is a constant irritant for China, but Beijing has hit upon a way to weaken the movement: starve it of new arrivals.

An almost empty dormitory in the gloomy main reception centre for Tibetan exiles in Dharamshala, the Indian hilltown home to the community, is a graphic illustration of changes that have taken place over the last 18 months. India has sheltered Tibetans since 1959, when the Dalai Lama fled his homeland in fear for his life after a failed uprising against Chinese rule on the strategic Tibetan plateau.

Since then, thousands of others have made the same treacherous trip to Dharamshala, mostly via Nepal across snow-capped mountains on foot and horseback, swelling the ranks of the population abroad to an estimated 200,000. But today, fewer and fewer people are getting out.

'Up until March 2008, we used to have about 2,500 to 3,000 people arriving here per year,' Mingyur Youdon, the deputy director of the reception centre in McLeod Ganj, the uppermost part of Dharamshala, told AFP. 'Since February 2008, we've received only about 1,000.' Her building is the sorting centre for new arrivals where they are offered beds, food, financial help, information on schooling if necessary, and, most importantly for some, an audience with the Dalai Lama.

The drabness of the building is punctuated with pictures of the smiling 75-year-old spiritual leader, whose residence sits in an isolated spot just outside the town with a panoramic view of the valley below.

A woman wailing with grief in the female dormitory is testament to the emotional hardship of a life in exile. In March 2008, the date when arrivals in Dharamshala began falling, the capital of Tibet was convulsed by a wave of violent protests against Chinese rule that left an unknown number of people dead and injured. China says 22 people died in the violence, which spread from Lhasa across Tibet and neighbouring regions with large populations of ethnic Tibetans. The Tibetan government-in-exile says more than 200 died and 1,000 were hurt.
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