Tibetans Fired First, Chinese Border Guards Claim

Sydney Morning Herald

Saturday October 14, 2006

Mary-Anne Toy in Beijing and Jano Gibson

CHINA has admitted killing at least one Tibetan - believed to be a teenage Buddhist nun - and wounding one other after border guards opened fire on refugees trying to flee across a perilous Himalayan pass into Nepal.

But China yesterday claimed the border guards were "forced" to fire in self-defence after the refugees attacked them first - despite foreign climbers who witnessed the incident saying the group of about 70 Tibetans, including dozens of children, were defenceless.

A report by the official Xinhua news agency out of the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, said the Tibetans ignored an order to stop and then attacked the guards. "In this situation, the border guards were forced to fire to protect themselves," Xinhua reported.

A female Tibetan refugee, 24, who managed to escape by hiding in the snow with two other women for eight hours, said the group knew they had been spotted and had sped up.

"They warned us to stop and then they started shooting," she told the South China Morning Post. "We were running. The bullets were landing near us. The nun who died was 100 metres ahead of me. I saw her fall down. I was lucky. A bullet tore my trousers but it missed me."

The Tibetans were trying to flee across the snowbound 5700-metre Nangpa Pass, which links Tibet to Nepal.

China said a preliminary investigation had revealed that the case was one of an illegal, large-scale, people-smuggling operation organised by snakeheads, Chinese criminals who specialise in such smuggling.

The US embassy in Beijing yesterday confirmed it had lodged a formal protest about the shooting.

The Tibet Refugee Centre in Nepal said only 41 out of the 75 Tibetans in the group managed to reach Kathmandu.

The Chinese authorities did not release details of the dead and injured but human rights groups, quoting Tibetans in the group who managed to escape, said a 17-year-old nun called Kelsang Namtso was killed and a 20-year old Tibetan called Kunsang Namgyal was shot twice in the leg and arrested.

A Western mountaineer, who was the first to tell the world about the incident, said the nun's body was left in the snow for about eight hours before it was carried away by soldiers. "The Chinese army, right around sunset, came and took it away. They wrapped it up and carried it down," the mountaineers said.

On Thursday, a Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said "if the report [of the shooting] was accurate" it would be investigated.