Well said.
Posted on 10/23/2006 5:35:24 AM PDT by CarrotAndStick
KATHMANDU - Some 41 Tibetan refugees fired on by Chinese border guards last month as they entered Nepal have been flown to India, an official from the Tibetan Reception Centre in Kathmandu said Saturday.
"The 41 Tibetans refugees who arrived in Kathmandu left for New Delhi on Friday for security reasons," said an official at the Tibetan Reception Centre.
The official did not elaborate.
The Tibetans arrived in Kathmandu earlier this month after Chinese soldiers opened fire on a group of about 70 people, including children, women, monks and nuns, trying to flee into Nepal on September 30.
A nun was killed in the incident according to witnesses and foreign Tibetan groups.
The remaining Tibetans in the group of 70 were believed to have been detained by Chinese border guards. China confirmed the incident took place and said that the border troops were forced to act in self-defense after soldiers found the group trying to escape Tibet and were attacked.
Numerous foreign climbers witnessed the incident including a Romanian climber who filmed footage of a group of unarmed Tibetans being fired on as they tried to run away.
A monk who was part of the group told AFP that the Chinese border guards fired "indiscriminately" at the fleeing Tibetans.
Since 1989 Nepal's official policy has been that Tibetan refugees cannot stay in the country.
Sandwiched between regional giants India and China, Nepal pursues a cautious policy over the issue of people fleeing Chinese-controlled Tibet, directly to the north. The office of the representative of Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, was closed in Nepal's capital in 2005, but refugees continue to be transited through the Himalayan nation, often to the northern hill station of Dharamsala, where the Dalai Lama leads the Tibetan government-in-exile.
Tibetan refugees began arriving in Nepal in 1959 after the Dalai Lama fled Lhasa following an abortive uprising against Chinese rule. A year later Communist troops entered Tibet.
The Dalai Lama has in recent years urged greater autonomy from Beijing for his homeland.
Around 2,500 people a year make an often dangerous trip across the Himalayas into Nepal and India.
International rights groups accuse the Chinese of ruling Tibet through repression and military intimidation.
Tibetans reach India safely after shootings: group
By Ralph Jennings
Reuters
Monday, October 23, 2006; 3:52 AM
TAIPEI (Reuters) - More than 40 Tibetans en route to see the Dalai Lama in India have reached New Delhi safely after being shot at by Chinese border guards in an incident caught on video, a group of supporters said on Monday.
The group from China's Tibet Autonomous Region reached the Indian capital on Friday following a trek through the mountains that began with 77 people, said Khedroob Thondup, a member of the Tibetan Parliament in Exile.
Tibet has been ruled by China since Communist troops occupied the vast region in 1950, and the government deals harshly with Tibetans who press for greater political and religious freedoms.
Two people in the group, aged 13 and 17, were shot by Chinese border guards on September 30 as they headed toward China's border with Nepal without legal exit papers, Thondub said.
European mountaineers in the area, 5,700 meters (18,700 feet) above sea level, caught the shootings on camera and released their video on the Internet, he told a media briefing in Taipei.
Video of what appeared to be the shooting also aired on Romanian Pro TV.
China has said the border guards warned the group about the border crossing and then fired in self-defense when members of the group attacked them. The video shows no such confrontation.
Those who had made it to New Delhi would travel on to the northern Indian town of Dharamsala, headquarters of the Tibetan government in exile, said Thondup, visiting Taipei to raise awareness of the shootings.
The group would meet the Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader who fled into exile in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule, and have a chance to study in Dharamsala, he added.
They could stay as long as they wish and did not need to return to Tibet, he said.
More than 20 others involved, including seven children, were detained on September 30 and face at least a year in jail, said Meili Chow, research director of the Taipei-based Tibet advocacy group Taiwan Associates.
"We Tibetans, by becoming a part of China, have suffered like this for 40 years," Thondup said.
Groups try about once a month to escape through snowy Himalayan passes between border checkpoints into Nepal, Thondup said. Border guards sometimes catch escapees but seldom shoot at them, he added.
Seems that we are only concerned with freeing those people who have oil. No freedom for Tibet, No freedom for any of the Africans in countries where they are killed by the thousands. The hypocrisy is glaring.
We free what we can. Politicians see energy as a vital (fill in the blank)...
"Tibetans shot at by Chinese reach India"
- This is the reason why China can confidently meddle and exploit the world wide war on Islamofascism. They have no fear of it becoming a problem in their own country - they will act with ruthless extermination measures just as they have with the relatively peaceful Tibetans.
"The Nangpa Pass is commonly used as an escape route for Tibetans transiting into Nepal and from there to exile in India. Tibetans leaving Tibet along this route have been fired upon before by both Chinese and Nepalese security, on both sides of the border - in November 1998, a 15-year old Tibetan was shot dead near the border in Saga county, Shigatse prefecture in the Tibet Autonomous Region. But this is the first time that a Tibetan refugee has been shot dead in front of such a large number of witnesses from the international mountaineering community - it is currently a peak climbing season and there were several hundred people making an ascent of Cho Oyu at the time. Of these, at least 40 climbers in addition to Sherpas and porters at advance base witnessed the incident."
http://www.savetibet.org/news/newsitem.php?id=1037
We're fighting the enemy that's actually killing Americans on American soil.
If the Chinese and miscellaneous African citizens were murdering Americans on American soil, I think we'd be dealing with them very differently.
You could view it as hypocrisy but then again, you could just as easily view it as practical: we can't save the entire planet from itself so we might as well try and save the people who are killing us.
ping
Ping!
Unfortunately there is no Tibet ping on this forum. So I am just doing my best.
Well said.
Saw another article about this.
Some people are asuras. Actually, many people are influenced by such dark passions that even animals are more civilized. The way the Chinese have treated Tibetans and the country of Tibet is on the list of terrible crimes of the 20th century, and continues.
Tks foir the ping, dost.
Shame on the chicoms, as usual.
Looks like we have a ChiCom troll on the thread.
Why did PLA soldiers murder the Tibetans? ...only because they tried to get out of China without authorization from the PLA?
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