Making Tibetan Refugees

On 1 October 1949, the Communist Party of China (CPC) proclaimed the foundation of the People’s Republic of China and declared the incorporation of Tibet into China. By the end of 1959, The People’s Liberation Army of the CPC successfully defeated the Tibetan army and had complete control over Tibet. Thousands of Tibetans were forced to escape to India and Nepal by becoming refugees, including its leader the 14th Dalai Lama (Shakya, 1999).

In India, the Dalai Lama announced the establishment of the Tibetan government in exile with two key purposes: the first was the rehabilitation of Tibetan refugees and the other was to work for the freedom movement against the CPC (The 14th Dalai Lama, 1977). According to a demographic survey conducted by the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA aka the Tibetan government in exile) in 2009, the population of Tibetans outside Tibet stood at 127,935. There were 94,203 in India, 13,514 in Nepal, 1298 in Bhutan, and 18,920 elsewhere (Office of Planning Commission, 2010, p. 13).

In 1960, upon the request of the Dalai Lama, various countries, such as Canada, Switzerland, and the United States, provided asylum for the Tibetan refugees in India and Nepal based on humanitarian reasons (Buchser, 2010; Contenta, 2010). The dispersal of Tibetan refugees outside India and Nepal began as early as 1959, with Taiwan becoming the first country to receive Tibetan refugees from India and Nepal. The first group of Tibetan refugees migrated to Taiwan in September 1959 (Liu, 1996, p. 129). Taiwan received its first group of Tibetan refugees not at the request of the Dalai Lama but due to political motives, especially those Tibetans recruited by government agencies like the Mongol and Tibet Affairs Commission (MTAC). We will discuss this in a following section. Since then, Tibetan refugees from India and Nepal have continued to enter Taiwan for various purposes including education, marriage, job opportunities, and religion. According to the data submitted by the Mongolian and Tibetan Cultural Centre as of December 2022, there were 649 Tibetans in Taiwan, 559 being citizens of Taiwan, and the rest having residence permits called Alien Residence Certificates (ARC) (Mongolian and Tibetan Cultural Centre, 2022). If we include those who do not have an ARC residency permit as well as those who do not have any connection with MTCC, then there currently will be approximately around 850 Tibetans in Taiwan.Footnote 1

The number of Tibetans in Taiwan is usually only a few hundred, so they do not receive too much attention from the Taiwanese. Since the MTAC has been the official agency in Taiwan responsible for Tibetans, publications from commission including annual reports and policy compilation provides the historical accounts and policy guidelines about Tibetans coming to Taiwan through this agency (Hsu, 2001; Liu, 1996). In early 2000, the MTAC in collaboration with scholars from academic institutions conducted survey to obtain data on the lived experience of Tibetan refugees in Taiwan through questionnaires and interviews. The resulting two reports help us to understand the various challenges encountered by Tibetan refugees living in Taiwan at that time (Shen & Chen, 2005; Zhang et al., 2002).

Okawa (2007) observed that Tibetan refugees have been in an invisible situation in Taiwan. He studied Tibetans in Taiwan through two political stages: the ideology of Chinese nationalism and democratisation. According to the time when Tibetan refugees came to Taiwan, he divided them into six categories, emphasising that Tibetan refugees are not a homogeneous group in Taiwan. Okawa placed the history of Tibetans coming to Taiwan in the context of world politics, and emphasised the importance of continued attention on this issue.

Pan (2015) adopts the perspective of international human rights and uses the concept of “double liminality” to explain the particularity of Tibetan refugees in Taiwan. She points out that the Taiwan government neither treats Tibetan refugees in Taiwan as compatriots nor accepts their status as refugees, reflecting the ambiguity of the identity of Taiwan. Placed in this double liminal status, exiled Tibetan refugees in Taiwan have been discriminated against and have been denied their entitlement to human rights (Pan, 2015). The policy of denying residence to Tibetan refugees holding Indian Identity Certificates (ICs) lacks human rights considerations, while the certificate is recognised by many countries as a valid travel document (Pan, 2023).

These studies illustrate the particularity of Tibetans in Taiwan and why they deserve attention. However, the lived experiences of Tibetans in Taiwan are usually only reported by newspapers and magazines, or by a single group, such as Taiwanese-Tibetan families in Taiwan (Kung et al., 2020; Pan, 2016), which cannot provide a whole picture of the lived experience of Tibetan refugees in Taiwan.

This chapter examines the experiences of Tibetan refugees living in Taiwan, focusing particularly on Tibetans’ rights to work, live, and hold Taiwanese citizenship. The first section explains the history of Tibetan refugees’ migration from Nepal and India to Taiwan. In the second section, the chapter looks at Tibetan lives in Taiwan during three distinct periods. The final section examines human rights issues facing Tibetan refugees, and shows how Taiwan’s changing politics has been a key factor in determining Tibetan refugees’ rights, and their status in Taiwan.

Data were collected from personal experiences, interviews with authors, and existing scholarship available as secondary sources. The archives and research reports published by the MTAC provided important information for understanding the policies. Different experiences were analysed and presented through various case studies and authors choose these cases based on their time of arrival in Taiwan as well as to reflect the different phases. To protect the personal information and privacy of our interviewees, pseudonyms are used throughout the chapter to present the various case studies.

Historical Connection of Tibetan Refugees to Taiwan

The relationship between Taiwan and Tibetan refugees began after the CPC’s occupation of Tibet and the Kuomintang (KMT) relocated to Taiwan. In Taiwan, the Kuomintang reinstated the ROC (Republic of China) government, along with its historical claim over Tibet. Subsequently, the MTAC continued its function to affirm the historical claims over Tibet.Footnote 2 According to MTAC websites, it aims:

To defend the aim of the ROC constitution, ensure the equal status of various ethnic groups, promote the regional autonomy of Mongolia and Tibet, enhance the economic and educational reforms in Mongolia and Tibet, foster Mongolian and Tibetan cultures, and respect their religious beliefs and social customs, in the hope of achieving harmonious ethnic relationships and protecting the ROC's sovereignty. (MTAC, 2011)

The MTAC, therefore, served as an important channel for allowing Tibetan refugees to move to Taiwan. It also operated as an institution under the Executive Yuan, the highest administrative organ in Taiwan, making the MTAC responsible for managing Tibet and Tibetan affairs in Taiwan until it was transformed into the Mongol and Tibet Culture Center (MTCC) with the abolishment of the Organisational Act of the MTAC in 2017 (Laws and Regulations Database of the Republic of China [Taiwan], 2017; Ministry of Culture, Republic of China, 2017).

In the late 1950s, the KMT government in Taiwan proposed that several Tibetan resistance force leaders from Kham and Amdo, who had become refugees in India, relocate to Taiwan (Gyari, 2022, p. 121). Since then, different kinds of Tibetan refugees, such as resistance forces, students, monks, and Tibetan government officials from India and Nepal, have migrated to Taiwan and continue to travel to Taiwan. The historical trajectories of Tibetan refugees in Taiwan can be divided into three phases reflecting Taiwan’s transformation from authoritarian to democratic governance.

The first phase, lasting from 1959 to the mid-1980s, is characterised by the authoritarian regime. This is an era in which Chinese nationalist ideology was espoused. Two agendas largely dominated Taiwan’s national interest during this period, one was to defeat the CPC and unify China, and another one was to preserve the ROC-Taiwan as the only legitimate ruler of China.

The second phase, characterised by economic and political transformation, began in the mid-1980s and lasted until the end of the 1990s. During this period, in light of the realisation that recovering and unifying mainland China was unfeasible, the government abandoned its military focus and the political ideology of unifying China, and shifted towards strengthening the economic prosperity of the island. In these years, a major democratic transition occurred, involving the lifting of martial law, and the legalisation of the right to freely form political parties and to directly vote for the president. In the meantime, Taiwan’s manufacturing sector grew, which created a demand for foreign labour. While facing dramatic political, economic, and social change, Taiwan had to renounce many outdated laws and enact laws to cope with the new reality, such as enacting the Employment Service Act to incorporate foreign workers and the implementation of Immigration Law. The economic and political transformation evolving in Taiwan had a direct impact on Taiwan's approach, attitude, and policy towards Tibetan refugees in India and Nepal. Before the Dalai Lama’s visit in 1997, Taiwan and the CTA shared hostile relations resulting from the MTAC’s pursuit of policy and activities that challenged the legitimacy of the CTA. For instance, as we discuss in the following section, the MTAC recruited Tibetan refugees from India and Nepal to Taiwan and propagated them as Tibetan ethnic minority representatives of the ROC-Taiwan. A condition that helped with the reconciliation was Lee Tung-hui's agreement with the Dalai Lama that the MTAC would not be involved in the further development of Taiwan and CTA relations (Su & Wei, 2012, p. 186).

The third phase began in the early 2000s and has continued to the present time. It is defined as the era of post-democratic transformation. The Democratic Progressive Party that won the election in 2000 did not abide by the political ideology and claims of the KMT. In 2000, Chen Shui-bian of the Democratic Progressive Party was elected as the president, becoming the first elected president from an opposition party. Compared with the KMT’s consistent policy of treating Tibet as an inalienable part of China, the Democratic Progressive Party advocates for the recognition of Tibet’s independence and right to self-determination, and also does not recognise Tibetan refugees as overseas Chinese (President Office of the ROC, 2003). In 2003, to strengthen ties with the CTA, the DPP government established the Taiwan and Tibet Exchange Foundation. It was meant to replace the MTAC, however, due to its constitutional link, the MTAC could not be abolished. From 2003 to 2008, until the election of the KMT government in 2008, the Taiwan and Tibet Exchange Foundation played a central role in engaging with the CTA. Another important change witnessed during the Chen Shui-bian period was that Tibetan refugees from India and Nepal could directly apply for visas from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs without the support of the MTAC. Considering that Taiwan does have a refugee law and the majority of Tibetans who migrated to Taiwan during this period were those with Indian ICs, Tibetans faced the situation of not being able to secure rights to residence and work. They encountered more challenges than people in the previous two phases.

In short, Tibetan refugees in India and Nepal have been migrating to Taiwan for over 60 years. The lived experiences of Tibetans in Taiwan, especially in the context of rights to residence, work, and citizenship, are different in these three phases, based on Taiwan government policy towards Tibet and Tibetan refugees. In the following section, we will examine how Tibetan refugees have been treated differently as compatriots, cheap labour, and stateless people, in each of the phases.

Lived Experiences of Tibetans in Taiwan Based on Three Different Phases

First Phase, 1949–mid-1980s: Tibetan Refugees as Compatriots

During the era of the authoritarian regime, with its Chinese nationalist ideology, three sets of Tibetan refugees entered Taiwan via two prominent institutions: the KMT’s Intelligence Bureau and the MTAC. Their arrival in Taiwan was driven by a larger political motive to defeat the CPC and to assert Taiwan's ROC sovereignty over Tibet.

  1. 1.

    Members of the Tibetan resistance force

Soon after the Tibetan uprising on 10 March 1959, President Chiang Kai-shek issued a letter to Tibetan compatriots titled “Message to Tibetan Compatriots” (Gao Xizang Tongbao Shu), which outlined Taiwan’s policy towards Tibetan refugees in India. The letter reads as follows:

You are now shedding your blood in fighting against the Communist tyranny. Although I am now in Taiwan, my heart has been always with you in your war against Communism. The Government of the Republic of China is making every possible effort to give you continuous and effective aid.

The Government of the Republic of China has always respected Tibet's traditional political and social organisation and guaranteed the freedom of religious belief and traditional life of the Tibetan people. I would now like to solemnly declare that Tibet’s future political system and political status will be fulfilled by our government based on the principle of self-determination of its people. (Chin, 1984, pp. 222–223)

The letter confirmed that the KMT in Taiwan had not given up the policy of claiming sovereignty rights over Tibet. Following the letter, Taiwan launched a programme called “Support the Tibetan Resistance Movement against the CPC” and started mobilising resources and the general public to extend support for the Tibetan resistance movement. Upon the invitation of the KMT’s Intelligent Bureau, in September 1959, Taiwan received the first group of Tibetan refugees from India. These included, Chama Samphe, his wife Dolkar and their three daughters, and Mingyur Rinpoche’s assistant Thinley Phuntsok, and Asha (Liu, 1996, pp. 129–130). The Taiwanese government chose this group because its members were connected with the Tibetan resistance force (Chushi Gangdruk). For instance, Chama Samphe was one of the former administrative heads of the resistance force. Mingyur Rinpoche was an influential Buddhist master from Kham-Lithang,Footnote 3 the place with the largest membership of the Tibetan resistance forces. The KMT extended invitations to them solely because of their affinity with the Tibetan resistance force (The Welfare Society of Dhokham Chushi Gangdru, 2022, p. 110.)

The KMT hoped to use them to influence guerrilla operations undertaken by the resistance force in Nepal (Okawa, 2007). After their arrival, Chama Samphe was offered the position of Major General within the Taiwan army and Taiwan also established a branch office of the Tibetan resistance force in Taiwan (Lin, 1999). Whether the group was efficient in helping Taiwan against the CPC is not known but their arrival had high propaganda value for the KMT.

  1. 2.

    Frontier Cadre Training Class

In 1961, following the first group, the KMT initiated Project “National Glory” (Guoguang) which was a secret guerrilla war plan against the CPC. As part of the project, it launched a secret operation to recruit Tibetans from India and Nepal under the programme called Frontier Cadre Training Class (Liu, 1996). A total of 32 Tibetans were recruited for this particular programme. The government abandoned the secret operation in 1970 after many failures, and trainees were allowed to join various government units. Among 32 trainees, only ten remained in Taiwan; some of them returned to Tibet and some returned to India (Wu, 1999). Some of them continued to work as secret service agents for the Taiwan government in India and Nepal (Wu, 1999). Many of them has passed on and one of them, aged 87, lives with his Taiwanese family (Pseudonym, personal communication, December 22, 2022).

  1. 3.

    Tibetan Children’s Home

By the end of the 1960s, it was becoming more apparent that the KMT’s ambition to defeat the CPC was not realistic. The KMT had to terminate Project National Glory; however, it remained committed to the Chinese nationalist ideology, holding that the ROC (Taiwan) is the legitimate ruler of China. This led to a shift in the approach towards Tibetan refugees. The Taiwanese government started a new project of educating the younger generation of Tibetan refugees in Taiwan as part of a larger project to create ethnic cadres in Taiwan. In 1970, it implemented a programme titled “Cultivating Next-generation Tibetan Ethnic Cadres”. According to the MTAC:

Tibet and Mongolia, given their distinct culture, religion, and ethnic identity, and principally due to geographical location, remained isolated from the rest of China. Therefore, recruiting more ethnic cadres from these regions is crucial to integrating and unifying the country. It further asserted that ‘these young children must not only learn about their own inherent culture but should learn about national (Chinese-the KMT) history and language’. (MTAC, 1971, p. 152)

The project was initially undertaken by the China Mainland Famine Relief Association and only dozens of young Tibetans joined as students in the programme. However, the project was discontinued in 1978 because many students did not want to remain in Taiwan and could not master the Chinese language (Liu, 1996, p. 164). The government realised that it would be easier for children to start learning the Chinese language from a younger age. The project was transferred from the China Mainland Famine Relief Association to the MTAC. In 1980, the MTAC implemented a project called the Tibetan Children’s Home. From 1980 to 1992, about 107 Tibetan refugee children from India and Nepal took part in this project. According to the programme, once a student was accepted, all of his or her expenses were guaranteed, including cost-of-living fees, educational fees from primary school through college, and a round-trip ticket to return home every four years. Through this project, on the one hand, the government aimed to enable more Tibetan children to receive a complete modern education in a stable society and to help them maintain traditional Tibetan culture and religious beliefs; on the other hand, through such a programme, the Taiwanese government aimed to foster nationalistic feelings amongst members of Tibet’s younger generation, so that they would identify with the ROC and so that Taiwan could use these educated ethnic cadres to disseminate Taiwan’s influence among Tibetans in exile, as well as in a future Tibet (Liu, 1996, pp. 164–165).

An interview report published by Taiwan Panorama, a bilingual magazine run by Taiwan’s government, presents the living conditions of the children who came to the Taiwan as apart of the Tibetan Children's Home at that time,

These Tibetan children range from six to fourteen years old. They go to school, watch TV cartoons, and go to parks and children's playgrounds on holidays, like ordinary children in Taiwan. In addition, they also learn Tibetan and recite Buddhist scriptures …

Exposed to a new world that is rich in variety and with lots of things to do and see, these children's little hearts are full of wonderful excitement, but their hearts are also sometimes heavy when they think of their parents far away. "Sometimes when we get homesick, we hug each other and cry", says one little fellow. “But you get used to it after a while”. (Hsu, 1981)

Parents sent their children to Taiwan with the hope that their children could get a better education, and most of the parents who sent their children were economically less privileged (Pseudonym personal communication, March 28, 2021). However, these children were thousands of miles away from their parents and lived in a different linguistic and cultural environment. Although the aim was to pursue a better life, these Tibetan children who grew up in Taiwan often had a lonely and painful childhood, and developed feelings of alienation (Shen & Chen, 2005, pp. 27, 124). They felt alienated both from Taiwanese and Tibetan communities because of a lack of language proficiency and due to their different physical appearance (Pseudonym personal communication, December 22, 2022).

Tibetan refugees recruited during this phase were treated as compatriots and were provided with Taiwan nationality cards because the government in both principle and practice endorsed a policy of Tibet as part of China (ROC). The project was implemented without support from the CTA. As a result, a credibility gap was created, along with a hostile relationship between Taiwan and the CTA. The CTA criticised the MTAC for manipulating poor Tibetans and buying their influence through such a programme (Tethong, 2006). Parents of these children also faced severe criticism from the Tibetan refugee community in India because of their alliances with the MTAC. A Tibetan in Nepal revealed that in the 1970s and 1980s, the MTAC officers would visit Nepal and offer to relocate Tibetans to Taiwan because they were part of the ROC and, as such, were citizens of the ROC-Taiwan (Chiu, 2023). However, this was not the case later when the MTAC launched a programme of vocational training, discussed in the next section (Pseudonym, personal communication, April 28, 2023). Therefore, the MTAC's efforts to advocate for Tibet as part of the ROC were more aggressive during the first phase.

The TCH project was not successful because many children were not able to master the Chinese language and did not perform well academically, except when studying the English language because it was easier to learn. Moreover, children also suffered discrimination and bullying at school because of their appearance and their lack of proficiency in the Chinese language. In addition, many children also forgot the Tibetan language and gave up on their education, which ended up with them joining the low-skilled workforce in Taiwan (Shen & Chen, 2005, p. 1). Since the overall outcome did not meet the original expectation, the project was discontinued by 1992 (Liu, 1996, pp. 167–168). Some of the students returned to India and Nepal while some continued to work in factories and the construction sector, and some graduated from university. They were treated as overseas Chinese and through the overseas Chinese scheme they were able to obtain Taiwan citizenship after arriving in Taiwan.

Second Phase mid-1980s–1990s: Tibetan Refugees as Cheap Labour

During this phase, the MTAC was still a major formal channel for Tibetans in exile to migrate to Taiwan, but the motives of Tibetan refugees migrating to Taiwan during this phase were more focused on economic rather than political reasons. Taiwan was also going through a major political and economic transformation, including the change from an authoritarian to a democratic system.

  1. 1.

    Vocational training programme

In 1983, the MTAC started a project called “Tibetan and Nepalese returning to home country for vocational training program”. The primary purpose of this project was to help Tibetan refugees in India and Nepal gain some skills and training that could eventually help them secure a job or pursue entrepreneurial opportunities in India and Nepal.

Even though the Taiwanese government continued to use Chinese nationalist ideology rhetoric such as “returning to the home country” and identified Tibetans as “overseas Tibetans” or “Chinese minority nationalities”, it stopped providing citizenship for Tibetan refugees as it had done in the first phase (Liu, 1996, pp. 187–188). The government issued a regulation titled “Items governing the occupational training for Tibetan youths emigrated from India and Nepal”, which clearly stated the changed status of Tibetans in Taiwan. For instance, the Ministry of the Interior was no longer in charge of matters concerning ethnic minorities, including Tibetan refugees. The selected candidate’s application for training was to be forwarded to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), which would issue a visitor visa. The items also mentioned that the duration of the course should not be longer than one year at the most. After finishing the course, trainees must return to India or Nepal within one week, and they were not eligible to apply for long-term residence in Taiwan under any circumstances (Hsu, 2001, pp. 134–135). The government also abolished the “regulation of applying for the overseas certificate” which could potentially help them apply for long-term residence or for the Taiwan national identity card. With this, the government stopped treating Tibetan refugees as Chinese nationals but as foreigners (Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission, 2011).

In 1983, MTAC received the first batch of six Tibetans from Nepal for a car repair course, joined by a second batch in the same year for a cooking course (Hsu, 2001, pp. 134–135). The duration of the first sixteen batches was limited only to three months, and was later extended to six months and then to one year. From 1983 to 1989, 235 Tibetans over 16 years old, from India and Nepal, entered Taiwan via this vocational training programme (Liu, 1996, pp. 186–191). Gradually, when labour shortages became a serious concern in Taiwan in the 1990s, the MTAC started providing internships after training was completed. Consequently, the training period was extended up to one year or more. From 1990 to 1993, in batches 17–20, 179 trainees were sent to work in various factories. These internship programmes were aimed at helping the government with the labour shortage problem and also at helping Tibetans earn money to start businesses in India or Nepal. In 1992, the government announced the Employment Service Act and, according to the regulation, MTAC’s internship programme did not meet requirements.Footnote 4 Tibetan refugees working in factories through the internship programme become illegal. The MTAC found it hard to sustain the internship programme and had to end it that year (Liu, 1996, pp. 192–194).

However, some Tibetan trainees, after completing the training programme and working in factories, refused to return to India and Nepal and stayed in Taiwan in the hope that they could seek asylum there. There were several cases where Tibetan refugees were forced to become illegal residents because the MTAC had collected their passports after they landed in Taiwan and, when it was returned to them after completion of the course, their visa had already expired (Taiwan Association for Human Rights, 1999; Zhang et al., 2002, p. 63). Some, furthermore, went on to accuse the MTAC of forcing them to come to Taiwan with fake promises to provide jobs and citizenship (Shen & Chen, 2005, p. 18). There are also the some cases where MTAC rejected Tibetan requests to return to India due to labour exploitation.

Tsering was a farmer in one of the Tibetan settlements in South India. He came to Taiwan in 1989 with his wife, together with 40 other Tibetans, to join the vocational programme. After completing some training, he and his wife were sent to a glass factory in Hsinchu to work. They had no experience of working in a factory and did not speak any Chinese language. They worked long hours at hundreds of degrees Celsius making glass, earning 7000 NT dollars each as a monthly salary. At that time, a young Tibetan woman died suddenly by accident in the factory. This incident caused panic among Tibetan workers, plus there were some Tibetans who also got sick because of the poor environment at the workplace. Tsering and other Tibetans did not want to continue working in the factory anymore and wanted to go back to India. When the MTAC rejected their request, they decided to escape the factory together (Pseudonym, personal communication, February 13, 2011).

During those years, Taiwan's economy was booming, and factories were facing labour shortages. The government opened up Taiwan to foreign labour to solve the problem. The situation was favourable for Tibetans looking for another job as there was high demand for labour in Taiwan. Tsering and his wife easily found another job at a motor factory. They worked ten hour and could earn up to 800 NT dollars a day. This income was much better than for farming in India. They lived in the factory’s hostel and seldom went out because they feared that the police might catch them and send them back to India. They did not have any residence permit documents. Therefore, they wanted to make the most of their time in Taiwan to earn money so that they could send their children to a better school to study (Pseudonym, personal communication, February 13, 2011).

Those overstayed Tibetans had found their way to survive and make money in Taiwan. However, for the Tibetan community in exile, coming to Taiwan with the MTAC was not a sanctioned act and so they were labelled as traitors (Tsering, 2022). Even though there were good economic opportunities in Taiwan, the burden of being despised also weighed heavily on Tibetan refugees.

  1. 2.

    Working illegally in Taiwan

When the MTAC stopped the vocational programme, the official channel for Tibetans coming to Taiwan to work in factories was also closed. However, in 1997, Taiwan's first democratically elected president, Lee Teng-hui, bypassed the MTAC and invited the Dalai Lama to Taiwan through “The Buddhist Association of the Republic of China”. On this occasion, the Taiwanese people's courtesy and respect for the Dalai Lama contributed to changing the Tibetan exiles’ perception of Taiwan from suspicion to trust. This reversed the image of Tibetans in Taiwan amongst the exile community (Bawa, 2020, p. 43). On 16 April 1998, the CTA established the office of Religious Foundation of the Dalai Lama in Taipei, which was a concrete political achievement resulting from the Dalai Lama's visit to Taiwan (Tsering, 2022). In addition, the visit of the Dalai Lama to Taiwan also washed away the stigma of those Tibetans who came to Taiwan through the MTAC. The improvement of the relationship between the Taiwan government and CTA created the illusion that Tibetan refugees could just take tourist visas to work in Taiwan and earn money (Tashi, 1997, pp. 80–81).

Inspired by the Dalai Lama's visit to Taiwan, Tsering and other overstayed Tibetans appealed to the MTAC and the Taiwan government for citizenship rights. In 1999, with the help of the Taiwan Association for Human Rights, Tibetans who had overstayed their visas came to the MTAC to deliver their petition and to ask the MTAC to keep their promise of citizenship, which was long overdue. The petition reads as follows:

From 1989 to 1992, MTAC officials came to South India, North India, and Nepal to recruit Tibetan refugees to work in Taiwan. They explicitly said that 'if you wish to come to Taiwan, we will arrange everything for you, including passports. In Taiwan, we will find a job for each of you and help you apply for ID cards with permanent residency'. So we left our parents and family, with only a passport (that was given by the MTAC) and an immigration certificate in hand, and a dream of a better life in Taiwan. At that time, only a few of us were told to take the training programme here. Most of us were informed that we would have a good job and live a better life. The MTAC even promised to grant us ROC ID cards. However, our passports and immigration certificates were taken away by the MTAC after arriving in Taiwan. We were sent to factories to work in poor conditions. From then on, we became cheap labourers and lived an ambiguous life in Taiwan.

Although we did not have nationality in India or Nepal, we were refugees and at least were admitted as legal foreigners. In Taiwan, however, we are neither citizens of Taiwan nor refugees, and at worse we became illegal. We cannot go back to our family in India or Nepal because we have no passports. Thus, we are trapped and have had to live the past decade in fear and with no protection. We can only do odd jobs; we cannot ask for medical help even when we need it; we are afraid of the police in the streets, as we cannot explain to people our absurd situation. We cannot seriously develop a relationship because having a legal marriage under such circumstances is impossible (Taiwan Association for Human Rights, 1999).

In 2001, 139 Tibetans received Taiwan's ID with the help of local human rights organisations and official legislators (Hsu, 2001). The Dalai Lama, during his second visit to Taiwan in 2001, also appealed to President Chen Shui-bian about these Tibetans. Although protests and petitions solved the legal problem of Tibetans in Taiwan at that time, it caused misunderstanding among Tibetan refugees that they could come to Taiwan to work and earn money. Some people even borrowed money to apply for passports to come to Taiwan through a human trafficking ring (Shen & Chen, 2005). After they arrived in Taiwan, they often found out that the reality was not what they had imagined. It turned out that they were trapped in Taiwan, living a life hiding from the police by holding fake passports or overstaying (Shen & Chen, 2005) (Pseudonym, personal communication, May 12, 2023).

Tibetan refugees did not have the required qualifications for higher-skilled jobs. Although it was easy for them to find work in factories, it was difficult for them to negotiate better wages or benefits because they were illegal workers. Tibetan workers were often mistaken for foreign workers or aboriginals due to their appearance, and were assigned to rough or dangerous jobs (Shen & Chen, 2005, p. 90).

Kalsang’s working experience in Taiwan is a typical case among Tibetans in the 1990s. He was born in India and his parents sold sweaters during the winter in an Indian city. He helped with his parents’ business before coming to Taiwan. After the Dalai Lama’s first visit to Taiwan in 1997, Kalsang came to Taiwan in 1998 with an Indian passport bought on the black market and 600 US dollars. His first job was in a textile factory introduced to him by a Tibetan he knew in Taiwan. However, he found it too difficult to keep up with the pace of the other workers and quit on the first day. He then worked in another factory but had to leave because the police came to check. Finally, he worked in another textile factory and earned 30,000 NT dollars a month(Pseudonym, personal communication, February 25, 2011).

In Kalsang’s experience, Tibetan refugees are amongst the hardest-working group in the factory compared to other foreign workers from South Asian countries. Kalsang said, “This is not because Tibetans are necessarily more diligent, but because we are working illegally. I never know when I will be caught, so I try my best to make money every day” (Pseudonym, personal communication, February 25, 2011). Fortunately, Kalsang was able to obtain a Taiwan ID in 2001 with the help of a petition group in 1999Footnote 5 (Pan, 2015, pp. 50–52).

After getting the Taiwan ID, the 139 Tibetans could finally live without fear and with no need to hide when working in Taiwan. While Tibetan refugees had been actively seeking visas or legal residency in Taiwan, the MFA pointed out that the situation of Tibetans staying in Taiwan illegally was becoming quite serious, had “reached the level of threatening border security and social peace” (Merit Times, 2007), and violated the original intention of the policy of lenience towards Tibetans. The government at the time was compelled to re-examine the applicable laws for Tibetans coming to Taiwan (Merit Times, 2007).

Third Phase, 2000–Present: Tibetan Refugees as Stateless People

The third wave of Tibetan refugee migration to Taiwan occurred in the post-democratic reform period. The experiences of Tibetans who migrated to Taiwan during this period were different from those who migrated during the first two phases, mainly because of the changed political situation in Taiwan. This phase had a number of distinct features. First the great majority of Tibetans travelled to Taiwan without the involvement of the MTAC. This meant that they were not recruited by the MTAC and there was no political agenda behind their migration to Taiwan. Second, instead of using fake Indian and Nepal passports, they travelled using ICs issued by the Indian government. Third, since the Dalai Lama’s first visit to Taiwan, there was a new demand for Tibetan Buddhist masters (Fraser, 2018). The total number of Tibetan Buddhist centres increased from 82 in 1996 to 473 in 2018. Also, the total number of Tibetan Buddhist followers increased to approximately half a million (Own, 2018, pp. 3–4). The numbers of Taiwanese visiting Dharamsala, headquarters of the CTA and the Dalai Lama's residence in exile, for both religious and other purposes such as tourism, also increased, and, as a result, there were growing cases of transnational marriage between Taiwanese and Tibetan refugees. The Director of the Dalai Lama’s Office in Dharamsala disclosed that every year for the Dalai Lama's teaching, about 1000–1500 Tibetan Buddhist followers from Taiwan visit Dharamsala (T. Ngawa, personal communication, October 19, 2020). Earlier on, visits to Dharamsala from Taiwan were only limited to a few officers from the MTAC (Tethong, 2006). In addition to monks and marriage migrants, there are a few students from India who have also migrated to Taiwan for educational purposes (D. Tsering, personal communication, January 11, 2020). Therefore, in the post-democratic transformation period, Tibetan migration to Taiwan largely constitutes monks, marriage migrants, and students.

Although Tibetan refugees can visit Taiwan with an IC, the Taiwan government has tightened its borders for the migration of Tibetan refugees. When the KMT regained power in the presidential election of 2008, the government amended the “Regulations Governing Visiting, Residency, and Permanent Residency of Aliens” (RGVRPR): The new Article 6 of the residency regulation stated that

Stateless persons who entered Taiwan with a visitor visa may not apply for residency. If a particular individual holds a valid visa whose duration of stay is at least 60 days and has not been prohibited from extending the duration of stay or any other restriction, or has special circumstances verified by other government agencies commissioned by competent authorities, then this individual shall not be excluded. (Ministry of Interior, 2008)

With this resolution, the status of Tibetan refugees was reduced from foreigner to stateless. With the exception of staff members of the office of the religious foundation of the Dalai Lama, visitor visas that are issued to Tibetans with ICs, and also some with Indian and Nepalese citizenship, contain an additional note which states that the visa cannot be changed to other visas such as those for residence or work. This means that Tibetan refugees in Taiwan cannot have the right to apply for a residence permit, which causes complex problems while living in Taiwan (Pan, 2023). In this section, we will illuminate those challenges.

  1. 1.

    Tibetan refugee students in Taiwan:

We explore the challenges that Tibetan refugee students face in Taiwan through a personal experience shared by one of the authors of this chapter. We use the auto-ethnographyFootnote 6 method to reflect on Taiwan’s immigration process and law related to Tibetan refugees who hold Indian ICs.

After completing my PhD degree in India, I obtained a scholarship from an NGO in Taiwan for studying the Chinese language. I visited the Taiwan Economic and Culture Center in New Delhi for a visa application. The office denied my application, reasoning that study visas are not applicable for IC holders according to Article 6 of the residency regulations. Of course, there is no guideline available on government websites about Tibetan refugees seeking to travel to Taiwan for education purposes.

Fortunately, I have a friend who had earlier faced the same problem. With their help, I contacted the Taiwan and Tibet Human Rights Networks (TTHRN), an NGO that works advocating for human rights in Tibet and Taiwan. The NGO helps students connect with legislative members in Taiwan who are willing to help Tibetan refugees. The legislative member will issue a letter of guarantee stating he/she will be responsible for students while in Taiwan. This letter of guarantee is used by the NGO to apply for a visa for Tibetan refugee students at the MFA. Based on the letter of guarantee, the MFA will issue a visitor visa. If the MFA accepts the visa application, the office will notify the applicant, in this case the legislative member, and will provide the visa number. After securing the visa number, the student can visit the Taiwan’s Taiwan Economic and Culture Center residency in Delhi to apply for a visa. The problem here is while some students are aware of the TTHRN, many are not. Therefore, those who do not have an opportunity to contact the TTHRN fail to obtain the visa. During one conversation, a Tibetan student in Taiwan revealed that he wasted six months on a visa application as he was not aware of the TTHRN. The TECC does not provide any clear guidelines on how to process the visa application, and does not give reasons for declining a visa (Pseudonym, personal communication, June 12, 2020).

After securing a visitor visa with the help of the TTHRN, I was able to join a Chinese language class. Generally, after three months in Taiwan, foreigners are eligible to apply for an ARC residence permit, which provides, in addition to a one-year residence permit, access to the government’s healthcare service, which is probably one of the most affordable healthcare services in the world (Numbeo, 2019). An ARC also allows the foreign student the right to take a part-time job and it serves as an identification certificate for foreigners in Taiwan. However, the visitor visa that I obtained had a note stating “This visa is not changeable for a resident visa”. Based on Article 6 of the residency regulations, I am not eligible for the right to residency and consequently I am not allowed to have a part-time job and do not have access to affordable medical insurance provided by the government.

Additionally, regardless of the duration of the language programme, I was eligible only for six months visa, which meant I had to leave Taiwan every six months and come back with a new visa. This costs me about 3000 US dollars every year only in travel expenses. Therefore, for people like me, the Covid pandemic was a blessing in disguise because, after the closure of the border, I did not have to leave Taiwan every six months. This saved me huge amount of travel expenses and meant I could avoid another lengthy bureaucratic process in India for exit permits to travel outside India. However, the Covid pandemic left stateless people like me among Taiwan's most vulnerable groups of foreigners. The ARC, residence permit was a prerequisite for foreigners seeking to apply for vaccines and even for Covid tests. Taiwan's government later used the Unique Identity number to allow foreigners without an residence permit to apply for a Covid vaccine, but it was delayed for the first few months of the Covid pandemic outbreak.

After completing two years of Chinese language courses, I joined National Cheng Kung University as post-doctoral researcher. Even after the Ministry of Labour provided me with a work permit, the immigration office and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs denied me residence permit, reasoning that I was stateless. After several months petitioning various institutions, such as Executive Yuan, the MFA, and the immigration office, with the help of the CTA representative office in Taiwan and legislative members, I became the first Tibetan refugee who was not an employee of the CTA to be able to work in Taiwan with both a work permit and an ARC residence permit.

  1. 2.

    Tibetan refugee monks in Taiwan: The case of Geshe Tenzin

In contrast to Tibetan refugee students, the Taipei Economic and Culture Center provides clear guidelines for the application of visas for Tibetan monks (Bureau of Consular Affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ROC-Taiwan, 2023). However, they are entitled only to a two to three months visa. This means, regardless of the duration of their religious activities in Taiwan, every two months Tibetan refugee monks should leave Taiwan and come back with a new visa. They are also not eligible to apply for the residence permit. Additionally, monks should go for a visa interview that is not required for other applicants like students.

Geshe Tenzin (Tenzin, personal communication, April 25, 2023) entered Taiwan with an IC in early 2016 to take part in religious teaching organised by a Taiwanese-Tibetan Buddhist centre. Since then, he continued to receive invitations from various centres and has been living in Taiwan with a visitor visa that is valid only for two to three months. This means that every two months, he has to leave Taiwan and come back with a new visa. Generally, he travelled to Thailand because it was cheaper and because this did not require an exit permit from the Indian government, which in itself takes about two months to obtain. It was financially difficult for Geshe to travel five or six times a year, and also sometimes caused psychological distress.

As a consequence of these visa troubles, Geshe applied for an Indian passport in 2019 after surrendering his registration certificate (aka refugee certificate) and IC issued by the Indian government. Geshe hoped that after obtaining Indian citizenship, he would be able to apply for an residence permit as a foreigner, but the government refused to give him a residence permit. Geshe continued to face similar problems those of stateless Tibetans in Taiwan.

Taiwan has already granted resident visas for other religious practitioners but Tibetan monks with Indian, Nepalese, and Bhutanese citizenships continue to face the same challenges as stateless citizens (Bureau of Consular Affairs, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ROC [Taiwan], 2017). On 6 June 2023, Tibetan monks launched a press conference which called for the Taiwan government's fair treatment of Tibetan Buddhist monks (Taiwan International Tibetan Buddhist Association, 2023). American Institute in Taiwan publishes annual reports about human rights in Taiwan and unfair treatment of Tibetan monks was mentioned as one of the issues (American Institute in Taiwan, 2019). 

  1. 3.

    Taiwan-Tibet transnational marriage: The case of Tsai Yung-ching and Lhundup Tsering

In November 2020, a group of non-governmental organisations in Taiwan including the TTHRN, Students for a Free Tibet (Taiwan), and the Association of Visual Arts in Taiwan, organised a talk that discussed transnational marriage between Tibetan refugees and Taiwanese.Footnote 7 The main speaker Tsai Yung-ching, a documentary filmmaker, married her Tibetan husband Lhundup Tsering. She visited Dharamsala in 2004 to interview the Dalai Lama. Tsai made her second visit to India in 2005 and met her future husband, Lhundup Tsering, who was living in India as a refugee. After their marriage in 2008, Tsai Yung-Ching and Lhundup Tsering were preparing to relocate to Taiwan; however, because of his status as “stateless”, Lhundup Tsering was only able to acquire a visitor visa to Taiwan, which allowed him to stay with his family for only six months a year. The lack of a right to residential status for Tibetan refugee spouses triggered a forceful separation of the family (Pan, 2016).

In 2011, Tsai, along with twelve other Taiwanese-Tibetan families, formed the Taiwan-Tibet Family Human Rights Alliance (Taiwanese and Tibetan Family Rights Association, n.d.), and started petitioning for residential rights for Tibetan spouses. In July 2012, the government set up guidelines for the review of applications filed by Tibetan spouses who hold Indian ICs, to allow them to apply for residency under certain conditions. The conditions that holders of Indian ICs must meet to qualify for this type of visa were: being in a registered marriage of at least three years and having been in the country for more than 183 days in each of the three most recent years. Those who have biological children in Taiwan only needed to meet a two-year condition.Footnote 8

After seven years of petitions and demonstrations, the Executive Yuan repealed the regulation for Tibetan spouses with Indian ICs in 2017 (Immigration Services, Ministry of Interior, ROC-Taiwan, 2017). Finally, Tibetan refugee spouses in Taiwan were eligible to apply for the ARC and, after staying in Taiwan continuously for three years, could apply for citizenship. It was originally a right enjoyed by foreign spouses in Taiwan, but it took a long time for Taiwan and Tibetan families to obtain it (Kung et al., 2020; Pan, 2016).

Conclusion

Tibetan refugees holding Indian ICs can apply for political asylum following international refugee laws in Europe and the United States, and can then become citizens of those countries (Hess, 2009). Due to historical and political factors, Tibetan refugees have had certain links with Taiwan. Considering that Taiwan does not have a refugee law and is not a signatory member of the United Nations’ 1959 convention on refugees and its 1969 protocols, the lived experiences of Tibetan refugees in Taiwan are unique compared to other countries. This chapter underscores various experiences of Tibetan refugees in Taiwan with a particular focus on rights to residence, work, and citizenship. Different stages of the political system present different ways in which Taiwan treats Tibetans, and it also directly affects the lives of Tibetans in Taiwan.

As shown in the first phase of Tibetan migration to Taiwan, Tibetan refugees were able to obtain citizenship rights because of the KMT government’s policy that advocated Tibet as part of the ROC-Taiwan and Tibetan as one of the ethnic minorities. The first two groups, the Tibetan resistance force and the secret 32 guerrilla forces, were recruited with the plan to launch a military attack on the CPC. The TCH aimed to create an ethnic minority cadre for the future ROC. The Tibetan refugees were used by the KMT government as propaganda for its anti-communist missions and also to legitimise the ROC-Taiwan as the sole representative of China.

When Taiwan entered the stage of democratic transition and economic development, in addition to propaganda value, Tibetan refugees became an important source of cheap labour to support labour shortages in Taiwanese factories. As discussed in the second phase, the government abandoned the overseas Chinese category for Tibetan refugees and subsequently revoked their right to obtain citizenship. Tibetans recruited by the MTAC during this phase were treated as foreigners and had to get a visa from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to enter Taiwan. Fake promises to provide jobs and citizenship forced refugees to become illegal immigrants and cheap labour in Taiwan’s booming factories.

Due to the Dalai Lama's visit to Taiwan and the democratisation of Taiwan, which have brought a breakthrough in the relationship between Taiwan and CTA, Tibetan refugees no longer need to come to Taiwan through MTAC. However, the Taiwan government started treating Tibetan refugees as stateless. In consideration of national security concerns, the government imposed strict scrutiny and restrictions on Tibetan refugees entering Taiwan. The government enacted a law that prohibited Tibetans from obtaining the right to residence, work, and citizenship. With their new status as stateless, Tibetan refugees were denied residence visas, working rights, and access to healthcare, as showed in the experiences of Geshe Tenzin, Tibetan students, and marriage migrants.

In conclusion, the Taiwan government has treated Tibetan refugees as compatriots, overseas Chinese, foreigners, and stateless people in different political stages. While Tibetan refugees have gained citizenship by serving the state’s Chinese nationalist ideology, they have also been considered stateless and unable to obtain a residence visa due to national security concerns. This chapter illustrated the lived experience of Tibetan students, economic migrants, and Tibetan Buddhist monks, who encounter discriminatory treatment by the government. Although national security is an important consideration, human rights protection is the responsibility of a modern democratic country. Therefore, under the consideration of national security, it is also necessary to take into account the protection of human rights. That is a problem that Taiwan, as a modern democratic country, must face and solve.