Posted on 10/11/2006 6:42:59 PM PDT by blam
Nun killed as guards gun down refugees from Tibet
By Thomas Bell in Kathmandu
(Filed: 12/10/2006)
At the end of their terrible journey, a group of Tibetan refugees yesterday told how a nun was shot dead and 14 children taken away at gunpoint by Chinese border guards during a 20-day march to escape across the Himalaya.
Seventy-five men, women and children started out, often walking at night to avoid security patrols but only 41 made it to the Nepalese capital Kathmandu, leaving the young nun dead in the snow and another man lying wounded. The remainder, including the children, were marched away at gunpoint.
The shooting was witnessed by scores of westerners camped nearby.
A 24-year-old woman described her escape as the survivors laboured up the snowbound 18,753ft Nangpa Pass linking Nepal to Tibet.
She said: "We were walking in line. Before the shooting we knew the soldiers were after us so we started to walk quickly. They warned us to stop, then started shooting. We were running. The bullets were landing near us. The nun who died was 100 yards ahead of me. I saw her fall. I was lucky. A bullet tore my trousers, but it missed me."
The refugee, who was a farmer in Tibet, asked not to be identified to protect her family who remain in the country. After the shooting earlier this month, she hid for eight hours in the snow with two other women before venturing out.
They walked past the body of the dead nun, who, she said, was 17-year-old Kalsang Namsto, face down in the snow with a bullet wound in her back. Another victim, Kunsang Namgyal, 20, was shot twice in the leg and arrested, the refugee said.
The party had started that day's march at 8pm the previous evening and the young woman was finally able to rest 28 hours later when she fell asleep on some rocks inside Nepal at midnight on Sept 30.
The refugees then walked for a further eight days into the lowlands before reaching a road and taking a bus to Kathmandu.
The incident was played out in front of scores of horrified western mountaineers camped on nearby Mt Cho Oyu, the world's sixth highest mountain. An unnamed British climber told the pressure group International Campaign for Tibet that they watched "Chinese soldiers quite close to Advance Base Camp kneeling, taking aim and shooting, again and again, at the group, who were completely defenceless".
Steve Lawes, a British policeman and mountaineer who was at the camp, said about 30 minutes later the area had been "taken over" by Chinese forces who marched a group of children away.
"The children were in single file, about six feet away from me. They didn't see us. They weren't looking around the way kids normally would. They were too frightened," he said.
"The atmosphere was very intimidating. We were doing our best not to do anything that might spark off more violence."
Around 2,500 refugees make the dangerous journey across the mountains to Nepal every year.
Most of them, like the young people in the latest group, plan to carry on to India to take courses in Tibetan language and religion which are banned in Tibet.
Yesterday, at a refugee reception centre in Kathmandu, the survivors were given new clothes, bowls of rice, and identity documents for their new life in exile.
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Yeah, well, some people act others decide to be spectators. What can you do.
Just think, this kind of scum (the red chinese), are exactly the sort of people the free traitors enthusiasticaly support.
On one side there is freedom, albeit with common sense and social limits. On the other is tyranny of one stripe or another.
Tyranny of every stripe exists in China. Capitalism is a red herring and a tool of the ChiComms to gain favor from the free world. There is no more freedom in China than when Mao himself ruled.
No limits capitalism winds up being just as destuctive as communism. They are both without moral compass and absent outside control both grind humans to nothing.
Free trade is a good thing. I'm just not convinced such ever truly exists between countries.
Capitalism and a free market are not necessarily one in the same, IMO. Capitalism as seen here in America is no where near a free market. It's over regulation and impeding tariffs are more of a hindrance to a strong economy than a safeguard. Laws should be passed that protect the citizens of our nation. Protect their rights, their property, and their person. If a company or another individual impedes upon one of these factors of protection then the law should be applied to that entity/individual to it's fullest extent. This philosophy in addition to creating a unregulated free market would create the most vibrant, unrivaled economy we have ever known. The USA has the resources, the ingenuity, and the prosperity to change the face of economics forever yet we hold our potential back with restrictions, regulations, and tariffs. It's abhorrent, IMO.
Note to self. Time to arm up concealed carry.
This story is obviously false propaganda by the enemies of the People's Liberation Army. Everyone knows China is our best trading partner (after the Wahhabists in Saudi Arabia), soaking up millions of dollars of American money to purchase more military hardware.
They would never do such a thing. (sarcasm)
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