International Human Rights Clinic Students Travel to India to Report on Tibetan Refugees
Violeta Haralampieva (’16), Quincy Kayton (’16), and Scott Woodbury (’14) interviewed refugees in Delhi, Dharamsala, and settlements in the Bangalore area.
Feb. 2017 Update: The International Human Rights Clinic completed this three-year project with a report on the status and condition of Tibetan refugees in India,“Tibet’s Stateless Nationals III: The Status of Tibetan Refugees in India,” authored in collaboration with the Tibet Justice Center, and the Tibetan Legal Association. Katrina Myers (’17) contributed in addition to Violeta Haralampieva (’16), Quincy Kayton (’16), and Scott Woodbury (’14).
This spring, three International Human Rights Clinic (IHRC) students traveled to India to conduct fieldwork for a report on conditions of Tibetan refugees. Violeta Haralampieva (’16), Quincy Kayton (’16), and Scott Woodbury (’14) visited Tibetan communities in Delhi, Dharamsala, and southern settlements in the Bangalore area. The students were accompanied by Lecturer in Law Virginia Greiman, substituting on very short notice for Professor Susan Akram, the director of the IHRC, who unexpectedly could not travel to India.
The students’ work involved visiting refugee settlements and interviewing Tibetans from all walks of life. They spoke with settlement officers, farmers, teachers, monks, business owners, and community leaders, learning about the vulnerabilities and concerns of this particular ethno-religious community, and how these concerns have changed over the past half-century. “Our work was a fact-finding mission to learn more about the legal, economic, and cultural rights of Tibetans who have relocated to Dharamsala or the Tibetan settlements in southern India,” says Kayton.
The students were struck by the attitude of the Tibetans they met or interviewed. “Our interviewees were some of the kindest, most humble people I’ve met,” says Haralampieva. “Their faith and resilience were inspiring. Nearly all the people we talked to expressed their gratitude to the government of India for hosting and supporting them for the past fifty years, despite the difficulties that exist for them as refugees in India.”
During their first semester in the clinic, the students worked with the Tibet Justice Center (TJC) and the Tibet Coalition to petition various United Nations bodies and representatives on behalf of Tibetans subject to new regulations within Tibet as well as on behalf of certain Tibetans imprisoned by the Chinese government. Their work entailed drafting and sending letters of allegation to Special Rapporteurs in the United Nations calling for the release of political and religious prisoners, and urging the Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing to visit Tibet to investigate the forced evictions of Tibetans from their lands.
The TJC, with which the clinic regularly partners, is a non-governmental organization based in London and Nepal that conducts research on the status of Tibetans in China, India and elsewhere, and advocates for Tibetan refugee rights. The Tibet Coalition is a collaboration of multiple Tibet interest groups that work towards raising awareness internationally of Tibetan issues, advocate for the release of political prisoners, and highlight China’s violations of Tibetan human rights, including land and housing rights, freedom of speech, religion, and culture.
India is not a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention or the 1967 Optional Protocol, so while many Tibetans in India fit the international definition of refugee, they are officially regarded by India as guests. “Our research sought to explore how that distinction affects the lives of Tibetans in India,” says Woodbury. “We asked questions pertaining to their right to Indian citizenship, deportations of Tibetans from the country, right to own land in India, forced evictions, and discrimination in employment or education,” says Haralampieva.
Woodbury explains that, while the TJC and other organizations have conducted a great deal of research on Tibetans in Tibet and Nepal, there is little recent research on Tibetans in India, specifically the southern settlements. “I think our work there will be valuable in narrowing that knowledge-gap,” he says.
The information collected by the IHRC will contribute to a report to be published by the TJC on Tibetans in India. The report will help American lawyers advocating on behalf of Tibetan asylum seekers in the United States. “I think our findings offer a fascinating insight into the treatment of Tibetans in India under Indian law, as well as the role of the Central Tibetan Administration (the Tibetan government-in-exile) in shaping the laws and policies applied to the Tibetans in India,” says Haralampieva.
“Being able to go to India, and speak with the different individuals was a rewarding and necessary component of the clinic,” says Kayton. “It wasn’t until I was interviewing individuals that I was able to appreciate how much I’d actually learned about the different legal issues surrounding the community, and why the research was necessary, that I gained a ‘bigger picture’ sense of what we were doing and why it mattered.”
The research was similarly eye-opening for Haralampieva, who found that there are many competing objectives involved in issues such as grants of Indian citizenship to Tibetans. For example, the difficulty of getting Indian citizenship, even for Tibetans born in India, is often viewed as a problem. However, many Tibetans, particularly those of the older generation, do not want Indian citizenship because they fear that their people’s assimilation into mainstream Indian society would threaten the Tibetan cause. “We were only able to understand these complexities as a result of talking to people in the communities,” says Haralampieva. “For me, this is the real value of fieldwork—a discovery that surprises you; something that you can’t learn in the classroom.”
“The clinic was a formative experience for me because it gave me practical experience in terms of research, writing, interviewing, planning, and organizing long-term projects,” says Kayton. “It has also allowed me to build on a year-long project and see the impact it could have.”
“I was impressed throughout the mission by the students’ dedication, curiosity, and desire to understand the problems of the Tibetan settlers from each settler’s personal experience,” Ms. Greiman says. “The students were thoroughly prepared for this trip based on guidance from Professor Akram and their own hard work and research. It was truly amazing to see their interaction with settlement officers, religious leaders, community activists, small businesses, professionals, lawyers, and the settlers themselves. I was honored to be part of this important endeavor on behalf of the School’s International Human Rights Clinical Program and was extremely proud of the work of the students.”
For both Kayton and Haralampieva, the IHRC factored into the decision to attend BU Law. “I first heard about the clinic when I was researching law schools,” recalls Kayton.”I knew that I was interested in international law and human rights, as well as potentially pursuing a career in a workplace such as the UN, so it was important to me that whatever school I went to had opportunities through which I could gain practical experience in these areas.”
“One of the main reasons I decided to attend BU Law was the IHRC, and it’s been one of my best experiences in law school,” says Haralampieva. She has found that the self-directed nature of the clinic work has given her significant preparation for practicing law in the real world. She intends to pursue careers in the area of human rights, so her work in the clinic has been invaluable preparation. “The clinic work required us to keep track of our own hours, complete assignments that were often open-ended and didn’t provide detailed directions, and develop more agency and autonomy than is encouraged or possible in the typical classroom setting.”