No support from the authorities

China annexed Tibet in 1950, and in 1959, protests erupted. The Dalai Lama – Tibet’s spiritual leader – fled into exile in neighboring India, and many of his countrymen followed. They also poured into Nepal.

The Nepalese government issued refugee cards, which allowed Tibetans to live in Nepal and travel within most of the country but conferred few other rights or privileges. The government hasn’t issued those identity cards since at least 2002, apparently as a gesture of solidarity with China, with which Nepal has drawn closer over the years.

We are not a country that welcomes refugees.

Officials also haven’t counted Tibetan refugees since 1993, when they numbered about 12,540.

Nepal isn’t a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention, a United Nations treaty that defines the rights of those fleeing their home countries. Government officials are unapologetic about their treatment of Tibetans.

“We are not a country that welcomes refugees,” says Chakra Bahadur Budha, spokesperson for the Ministry of Home Affairs.

Refugees live among the population and also move in and out of 13 refugee camps. Located next to neighborhoods and roads, the settlements offer clinics, schools, tea shops, general stores and Buddhist shrines. Refugees sell traditional Tibetan meals. Prayer flags flutter.

Young refugees' ordeal

Young refugees struggle to find work. After completing his master’s degree in electronic media and working in India, Tenzin returned to Nepal in late 2014 to support his family. He wanted a career in Nepalese media, but his lack of documentation ruled out that option.

Instead, he got a job with a nongovernmental organization that works with Tibetan refugees. It did not ask for identification.

No official unemployment data exists for young Tibetans. Many end up helping in their family’s souvenir shops or toiling in small tea shops and carpet factories run by other Tibetans but legally owned by Nepalese.

As a Tibetan, Tenzin can’t open a bank account or buy land or a house in Nepal. He does all transactions in cash.

“I feel insecure and sad,” says Tenzin, calm and soft-spoken.

Tsering, a 33-year-old Tibetan refugee, used her mother’s refugee card to apply for a visa to go to the United States for her master’s degree in 2014. The process took three months, as she pinballed between five Nepalese bureaucracies.

With Nepalese citizenship, she would have avoided that hassle.

“We are in the government’s office from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.,” she says, “and we refugees are the last priority.”

Outlaws

When she travels to India, Tsering says, its border police harass her and other refugees. They tell her they will hold her at the border, she says. They threaten her with jail.

“This is how it feels when you don’t have a country,” says Tsering, who grows emotional when discussing the challenges of Tibetan refugees. “I felt helpless that there is no way around. You can’t fight them. You cry so they have pity on you and let you go.”

Refugees who display the Tibetan flag are subject to arrest.

Human rights activists, including Narendra Bastola of the Human Rights Organization of Nepal, point to a raft of indignities visited upon refugees. Police show up at religious festivals and sometimes detain them. Refugees who display the Tibetan flag are subject to arrest. Tibetans in Nepal are not permitted to publicly celebrate the Dalai Lama’s birthday.

Some refugees resort to subterfuge to survive.

A Tibetan refugee, who works for a nonprofit, grew up as an orphan with his grandmother in India. But a few years ago, when the 28-year-old learned his mother was alive, he moved to Nepal.

The man, who asked not to use his name out of safety concerns, has fashioned fake documents so that he can see relatives and friends in India without being hassled by border police.

“At the end of the day, who are we, and what is our identity?” he says. “What is our history? Is it the one given in our fake document, or is it the one we are born with?”