Tibetan Refugees In India

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31462, 31 August 1967, Page 5

Tibetan Refugees In India

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) NEW DELHI, Aug. 29.

More than 400 Tibetan refugees who crossed over the Himalayas into India with their flocks of sheep and goats this summer were awaiting resettlement in temporary camps in the state of Uttar Pradesh, a Home Ministry spokesman said.

The spokesman said the refugees were still being interrogated.

He knew of no reasons which had brought them into India. But a spokesman of the exiled Tibetan Dalai Lama said in New Delhi today that the refugees were almost all from border areas, and that their flight would be largely caused by economic reasons. Conditions were becoming very difficult in Tibet. Refugee leaders told visitors to their camps at Bijnor and Pilibhit that they had come Into India because of religious

persecution after the forma- < tion of local units of Red 1 Guards last February. < The Red Guards had 1 humiliated local lamas and i begun destroying monasteries, i they said. The Dalai Lama's spokes- i man said the sheep, goats and I

cattle brought by the refugees i were being sold by the Indian i Government since there was no grazing for them and the < money would be given to the 1 refugees. The Tibetans would be < resettled in Mysore State, in ] South India, where there are 1

already 3000 Tibetans engaged in farming, he said. This is the biggest group of Tibetans in recent months to cross into India from Tibet. To reach safety they came over the 18,000 ft Mana Mana pass and the 16,000 ft Niti Niti pass.