Tibetan exiles fear increasing tensions

Security surrounding the Dalai Lama, has been stepped up after threatening letters and posters were circulated in northern India.

Police are investigating an extremist Hindu group which is demanding that the thousands of Tibetan refugees living in India should leave - and take the Dalai Lama with them.

Dharamsala, the adopted home of the Dalai Lama in northern India is where refugees have been arriving in their thousands for the past 50 years.

At the reception centre, 15 refugees arrived last night alone - all with stories of persecution in Tibet under the Chinese.

"I had to escape, I'm a monk and the Chinese destroyed my monastery, then they found documents on me that referred to a free Tibet and the Dalai Lama, I was arrested but managed to escape, " explains one refugee.

"They imprisoned me for calling for an independent Tibet, I was still at school," says one female refugee.

"I escaped Tibet because the Chinese wouldn't leave me in peace. I walked for 6 weeks to get to the border."

Many die on the journey across the Himalayas and of those who survive, the younger ones can suffer horribly.

Having suffered to join the Tibetan community in India, they are confronted with posters - now torn down - plastered on the walls of the Dalai Lama's home - calling for them to go back to Tibet.

There is an anxiety among Tibetans here that they too could become a target for Hindu nationalists who in recent years have launched violent attacks on Muslims.

Not surprisingly, the Tibetan government in exile is reluctant to reveal the true number of Tibetans living in India. The official number has for many years been 100,000.

There is a deliberate policy not to revise that number for fear of increasing tensions.

The irony is, if you ask a group of 16 year olds if they want to return to Tibet most say they do, but the Dalai Lama feels they would be met with suspicion.

"I think the local Chinese are too suspicious, sometimes they are foolish, they cannot see the whole picture, so whenever there is some Tibetan movement... sometimes some narrow minded local official sees it as something anti-Chinese, it's not," he explains.

The youngest refugees sing about their homeland and the Dalai Lama - the Chinese are unlikely to welcome them back and now there are those in India who say they are not welcome either.