Climbing into Trouble

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.

Each year as many as 3,000 Tibetans attempt the Himalayan crossing, hoping to join their spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, in India. China, which has systematically tried to erode the influence of Buddhism since invading Tibet in 1950, continually patrols the rugged region to prevent escapes. While there are occasional reports of border guards firing on refugees, this is the first time such an incident has been widely witnessed. Xinhua, China's state-run news service, quoted an unnamed official claiming that the guards were "forced to defend themselves." But Sergiu Matei, a climber and cameraman for Romania's ProTV, which later broadcast his footage of the shooting, asserts: "That was not self-defense. [The refugees] were clearly passing through Nangpa La and running from the police, who shot them like dogs."