Chch lawyer helping Tibetans

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32566, 27 March 1971, Page 23

Chch lawyer helping Tibetans

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) NEW DELHI. A young Christchurch lawyer who found life in New Zealand “too comfortable” is helping some of the 60,000 Tibetan refugees in India find a comfortable life in their adopted land.

I He is Mr A. R. Cottrell, aged 34, who came to New Delhi 18 months ago with his wife and two young sons. A partner in a family legal firm, Mr Cottrell said: “We had our own house and everything we wanted, but it wasn’t enough somehow. II was looking for a challenge, and I found it here." He is working as a consultant to the Tibetan Industrial Rehabilitation Society, an organisation set up by European charitable groups in 1965 to help refugees who poured into India after the Chinese invasion. The society was established by another New Zealander, Mr P. Brewster, who was working in India as a Tibetan refugee officer. INDUSTRIES The society helped the refugees form small-scale industries, a’ farm in the Himalayan foothill state of Himachal Pradesh, and a handicrafts concern. “The aim was to help these people establish themselves permanently,” Mr Cottrell said, “and they were given help with housing and jobs and the supply of schools and clinics. “They were given work, which is the most worthwhile form of aid. There is no human dignity in scrabbling for handouts.” In 1967, a separate organisation, called the Himalayan Marketing Association, was established with the aim of developing export markets

for the Tibetan industry products, particularly handicrafts. Mrs Cottrell, formerly a teacher, is now running the association and has helped build up a large export business to America, Britain Europe and Asia. CORSO GIFT New Zealand’s Corso recently made a SNZ4BOO gift to the society. It was used to buy looms and weaving materials. The refugees obtain their

material on credit, and the finished articles are bought by the marketing organisation.

As production has increased, export sales have risen until now there are enough orders from New York alone, for handmade carpets to keep all weavers associated with the T.I.R.S. busy until October. Other popular items are woven shoulder bags—2ooo go to England every month

—shawls, table linen, handmade shoes and embroidered slippers. Mr Cottrell said that exports to New Zealand were hampered by import restrictions. “It would be a significant aid gesture if New Zealand relaxed its restrictions to allow in certified hand-made products which would not be competing in any way with locally produced goods,” he said. The Cottrells hope to be able to hand over management of both organisations to trained Tibetan staff when they return to New Zealand at the end of their two years in Delhi next September.