Kathmandu, Aug 8: A major international conference on Tibetan studies, which the Nepal government recently barred from being held in the country, will now take place online.
The board of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, IATS, has announced that its 17th seminar will be held virtually from August 23 to 29, as originally scheduled.
The decision came after Kathmandu University’s Himalayan Centre for Asian Studies and Centre for Buddhist Studies, which had been co organising the event from Nepal, withdrew from the conference following the government’s intervention.
The government stopped the event last week after China raised concerns over the politically sensitive issue of Tibet. Chief Secretary Govinda Bahadur Karki and Foreign Secretary Amrit Bahadur Rai had instructed Kathmandu University not to allow the conference to go ahead, according to the organisers.
The organisers said they were verbally informed that the conference could not be held in Nepal but had not received any written notice from the government. Kathmandu University subsequently handed responsibility for the event to the IATS board.
The organisers said the agreement to hold the conference in Nepal was reached with Kathmandu University in 2023 and that no objections or concerns were raised during three years of preparation.
More than 700 participants had already bought airline tickets and booked hotels in Kathmandu, the IATS said, warning that the cancellation would cause financial losses and damage Nepal’s reputation as a venue for international academic events.
The conference will now follow its original programme online, allowing participants to join from their respective locations and present their research virtually.
The IATS advisory board had also written to Education Minister Sasmita Pokhrel on August 6, seeking her help in allowing the event to proceed in Nepal. The organisers said they received no response, after which they decided to shift the entire conference online.
In the letter, the board said preparations had begun after a formal decision in 2023 and that regular coordination had continued between Kathmandu University and the IATS board. It said no party had raised concerns about the conference between 2023 and 2026.
The organisers warned that cancelling the event would also hurt Tibetan and Himalayan studies, an area in which Nepal has significant academic expertise. Kathmandu University would lose an important opportunity to showcase its academic capacity and build new international networks, they said.
The organisers had asked the education minister to consider allowing the IATS itself to take full responsibility for hosting the conference if Kathmandu University could not do so.
Over its 47-year history, the association has held 16 similar academic conferences across Asia, Europe and North America. It said all had been strictly academic in nature.
People’s News Monitoring Service
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