Nepal, refuge for the Tibetan refugees.

All along my travel through this country, I have taken photographs of people because I look for the human contact in photography. I had the opportunity of visiting a Tibetan refugee camp in the region of Pokhara. The portraits taken in this village, where the look on each face shows strength, serenity, evoked in me the pain of the loss of their ancestral earth. I want to support the cause of the Tibetan independence movement by showing you some photos and remind you of the historic facts about Tibet.

Tibet.

In the autonomous region of Tibet, the local authorities suppress the slightest indecisiveness on the part of the opposition. The Tibet independence movement has experienced an uprising since September 1987. Since then thousands of Tibetans have been arbitrarily arrested and many of them have been tortured. A large number of Tibetans have been thrown in prison for openly expressing their point of view, without the use of violence, by shouting slogans and distributing leaflets stating their desire for independence. Numerous children and teenagers have been thrown in prison and tortured. These last years, repression in the Tibetan campaigns has increased following the revival of the protest movements in the villages. This has resulted in a net increase in the number of arrests of the laic population. In 1994 new security measures were enforced in order to avoid pro-independence manifestations and the secret service have raided numerous monasteries. At the beginning of 1995 there were at least 650 political prisoners in Tibet, the vast majority being monks and clergymen detained only because they wanted to express, without the use of violence, their support to the cause of Tibetan independence.

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL