Nepal deports Tibetan man to China - group

KATHMANDU, Aug 4 (Reuters) Nepal has returned a 25-year-old Tibetan man to China, a group working for the Tibetan cause said, the first known such case in more than four years.

The Washington-based International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) said Tsering Wangchen had been handed over to Chinese authorities on July 16 on the Friendship Bridge at the Tatopani border crossing northeast of the Nepali capital, Kathmandu.

''Although the Nepal government is not a signatory to international refugee conventions, the refoulement is a clear breach of the 'Gentlemen's Agreement' between the Nepalese government and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR),'' the group said in an e-mailed statement late yesterday.

Refoulement means the expulsion of someone who has the right to be recognised as a refugee under international law.

There was no immediate comment from the Nepali government.

Hundreds of Tibetans cross the rugged Himalayan border into Nepal every year on their way to India, where their exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, lives.

ICT said Wangchen had been detained last year while trying to return to Tibet from India, where he had attended a school.

Nepal, home to more than 20,000 Tibetan refugees who have left the Himalayan region since the Dalai Lama fled in 1959, deported a group of 18 Tibetans, including a 14-year-old, to China in May 2003.

Refugees fleeing Tibet are often detained for illegally crossing into Nepal but are usually handed to the UNHCR, which sends them to India, where a large exile community lives.

Kathmandu considers Tibet a part of China, a key donor to the impoverished country's economic development.

REUTERS PY KN1452