Editor’s note: Aspen Daily News photographer Heather Rousseau visited Patan, Nepal, for five weeks in May and June. Several of her photos depicting the life of Tibetan refugees can be found on pages 16 and 17. Her report is below.
Imagine a situation in which you have been driven from your native land and forced to start over again. You still have your culture, but it only exists in small, scattered pockets. You are given a free place to live, but it is not your home. You still have your language and your religion, but you also need to assimilate certain aspects of the foreign culture that surrounds you. Your basic needs are taken care of, but the real question is: Are you happy? This is not a hypothetical situation, but the life of a refugee. Or, as seen in the photos on pages 16 and 17, the life of Tibetan refugees living in Patan, Nepal.
Tsering Yangpa, a teenager and second-generation refugee living in Patan, wants more than anything to be a journalist. But because she is not allowed to receive Nepali citizenship because of her refugee status, she is not able to find employment. The inability for Tibetan refuges to receive Nepali citizenship affects more than just their job opportunities, but their ability to travel freely, buy land and cultivate a sense of home in Nepal.
When you talk to Tsering, she will tell you with an unwavering voice that she wants to go home. Home, of course, is Tibet, where she has never actually been. This is a standard response among many Tibetan refugees like Tsering. Yet there is also a group of Tibetans that will tell you that they don’t know where they belong.
The refugees remain committed to their Buddhist faith, which is their cultural identity. Elders spend their days in prayer and meditation. They pass prayer beads through their fingers, spin prayer wheels, and chant the popular mantra: “Om mani padme hum” — a prayer for human enlightenment that literally translates to, “praise the jewel in the lotus.” The Tibetan refugees keep to their faith as they organize peaceful protests following the spiritual leadership of the Dalai Lama.
Recently with the fall of the Nepali King and rise of the new republic, Tibetans have more opportunity to organize protests. However, with Chinese influence, the Nepali government is obliged to look after the best interests of Nepal and put a quick stop to even peaceful protests. Currently protesters are put in jail for the remainder of the day, though China is pushing for harsher sentencing. Tsering Yangpa, a second-generation Tibetan refugee quotes an old proverb, “Even a small ant can hurt an elephant.”
