International climbers play witness to shooting involving Tibetan refugees and Chinese border guards

By Austin Ramzy (’00), Time
October 16, 2006

Avalanches, high altitutude and bad weather make the Himalayas a dangerous place for anyone. But for Tibetan refugees attempting to flee their Chinese-occupied homeland, the mountains can be even more perilous. On the morning of Sept. 30, more than 100 international climbers at a base camp on Cho Oyu, the world’s sixth highest mountain, watched as border guards from the Chinese People’s Armed Police opened fire on a group of several dozen Tibetans ascending the 5,700m Nangpa La, a pass linking China and Nepal.

“At first I was thinking it was simply warning shots,” says an American who watched the scene through binoculars. “The reality is that they were taking direct aim at people trying to cross the pass.” As the mountaineers looked on, the guards allegedly shot dead one Tibetan—later identified by the Washington D.C.-based NGO International Campaign for Tibet as Kelsang Namtso, a 17-year-old Buddhist nun—while the others scattered. Shortly after, Chinese border guards marched through the base camp with about half a dozen Tibetan children they had apparently captured.

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