Unmitigated Atrocity: China murders Tibetan refugees in plain view

It’s truly hard for me to adequately express the outrage and horror my colleagues and I at Students for a Free Tibet are feeling as more details emerge about the murder of at least two Tibetan refugees as they and over seventy others tried to cross the Nangpa Pass from Tibet into Nepal. Their journey was one borne out of their desire for freedom from Chinese oppression, attainable only through escaping their homeland along a dangerous high altitude, snow-packed route. Chinese forces opened fire on a caravan of seventy Tibetans, including children as young as ten years old, and deliberately shot to kill, never giving warning of the coming onslaught.

Here are two passages from International Campaign for Tibet’s (ICT) report on the shooting. Be warned that they explicitly describe the cold-blooded murder of these innocent Tibetans.

“I saw a line of Tibetans heading towards the start of the [Nangpa] pass - a common sight. Then, without warning, shots rang out. Over, and over and over. Then the line of people started to run uphill. Watching the line snake off through the snow, as the shots rang out, we saw two shapes fall. The binoculars confirmed it: two people were down, and they weren’t getting up.”
…
The British mountain guide, who was summiting Cho Oyu at the time, told ICT: “There could have been as many as 60 climbers at Advance Base Camp who witnessed the incident. They could see Chinese soldiers quite close to Advance Base Camp kneeling, taking aim and shooting, again and again, at the group, who were completely defenceless. We didn’t know what the targets were but the climbers could see they were human beings. A couple of hours later, a caravan of yaks came along the pass from Nepal and there was no shooting. Clearly distinctions were made between intended targets. This was a deeply shocking incident for all of us.” [Emphasis added]

The Tibetans were given no warning. The Chinese forces fired on them continuously. The Tibetans were defenseless. The Tibetans were deliberately targeted by the Chinese border forces.

This is a sickening atrocity, perpetrated in full view of over sixty foreign mountaineers at a nearby base camp. Has China no decency? How can the murder, let alone the shooting at with the intention of causing grave harm, of civilians - children, women, and men - be justified in any situation? Quite simply it cannot and China’s savagery demands immediate international condemnation.

What is so rare about this case is not that China’s disdain for the value of a Tibetan life manifested itself in this shooting, but that there were witnesses present to tell the story. The ease and efficiency with which the Chinese forces went about shooting these innocent Tibetans belies any hope that this is a rare event. The only consolation to be had is that there were witnesses this time and the truth can come out about this shooting.

And who were the victims of this attack? Men, women, and children as young as ten. Tibetans who so longed for freedom that they decided the only option was to escape from occupied Tibet. They traverse a dangerous path through the Himalayas in order to find freedom. Nangpa Pass, where the shooting took place, is filled with deep snow and is situated at almost 19,000 feet. The decision to go into exile leads Tibetans along a harrowing route; unfortunately snow and ice was not the least of the worries for this group of refugees.

On Saturday night, my colleagues Lhadon Tethong and Tenzin Dorjee gave a talk at the Tibetan Childrens’ Village school in Dharamsala, India. A majority of the TCV students are recent arrivals from Tibet who endured similar, if not identical, journeys as the victims of last week’s attacks. The victims of this attack may well have been any one of the bright-eyed, intelligent students that attended our talk.

We work for Tibetan freedom full-time. It’s not shocking to come across Chinese policies and procedures that defy any respect for human dignity. Yet this shooting is an event so devoid of humanity, so monstrous that it must surely elicit global outrage. It is murder. Cold-blooded murder. There’s nothing to be said that can mitigate the horror of what happened and I’m left simply shocked that after fifty-plus years of China’s occupation of Tibet the Chinese have such abject disdain for Tibetan life.