Nepal to tackle illegal Tibetans

Tibetans have been holding regular protests in Nepal

Nepal will start pressing Tibetan exiles living illegally in the country to return to India, a government official has said.

Home Ministry spokesman Modraj Dotel said 106 Tibetans had been detained recently by police to check if they had valid refugee certificates.

Tibetans in Nepal have staged months of protests against China, accusing it of religious repression in their homeland.

More than 20,000 Tibetan refugees live in Nepal. Nepal's government is a staunch ally of neighbouring China.

Nepal's new Maoist Prime Minister Prachanda visited China soon after taking office in August.

'Tougher policy'

The Nepalese government spokesman said the verification of papers was being done with the help of officials from the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) in Nepal.

A UNHCR official told the BBC that if the detained Tibetans did not have valid refugee certificates they would be "helped to proceed to a third country".

The new measures mean that the authorities are simply following their own rules to the letter, having not enforced them strictly in recent months, the BBC's Charles Haviland in Kathmandu says.

Mr Dotel admitted to the BBC that - with a new Maoist-led government in place - policy was being made tougher.

The spokesman also alleged that some Tibetans were disturbing the lives of ordinary people.

In recent months, thousands of Tibetans have been detained in Nepal during protests against the Chinese crackdown in their homeland earlier in 2008.

But they were nearly always released the same day, our correspondent says.

Chinese pressure

Until 1990, Tibetan refugees arriving in Nepal were allowed to stay, and they now form the core of the exile community in the country.

But since then, under Chinese pressure, the government in Kathmandu has not let newly-arriving Tibetans remain, instead referring them to the UNHCR, which helps them move on to India.

Some children of official refugees have in recent years had difficulty getting the papers to which they are entitled once they reach the age of 16.

Many Tibetans pass through Nepal every year on their way to Dharamsala in northern India, where their spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, and the self-declared Tibetan government-in-exile are based.