Toronto, CANADA – Tibetans and Tibet supporters will be demonstrating outside the Chinese Consulate to protest against the recent fatal shooting of unarmed Tibetans as they tried to escape across the Himalayas from Chinese occupied Tibet into neighboring Nepal.
Shocking eyewitness reports have confirmed that Chinese forces opened fire on the group on September 30’ 2006, killing a 17-year-old nun. Up to five more Tibetans are feared dead after the soldiers, stationed at the Nangpa Pass between Tibet and Nepal, opened fire on the caravan of more than 70 escaping Tibetans, which included children as young as seven. The news first broke on the popular mountaineering website www.mounteverest.net. Foreign mountaineers at the nearby Cho Oyu advance base camp witnessed the incident and described how the soldiers took careful aim and fired repeatedly on the defenseless Tibetans, even as they attempted to escape.
Forty-three people from the group have successfully crossed into Nepal and have now reached the United Nations sponsored Tibetan Refugee Reception Centre in Katmandu. The fate of the other Tibetans, including at least 14 children, remains unknown. There is concern that many of them may have been injured during the shooting and apprehended by the security forces.
“This horrible tragedy shines a spotlight on the suffering; Tibetans continue to experience under Chinese occupation,” said Khedip of Students for a Free Tibet. “The Chinese government tries to make the world believe that Tibetans in Tibet are happy, but the reality is that not only do thousands of them try to escape every year, but they are killed or imprisoned by Chinese authorities if they are caught.” He himself fled Tibet 5 years ago through the same pass.
“We call on the Chinese government to immediately release the detained children and innocent refugees and halt their continued violence against the Tibetan people.” said Tsering Khangsar, President of Canada Tibet Committee. “If China wants to be seen as a modern member of the international community that deserves such honors as hosting the Olympic Games, it must stop its blatant violations of human rights and international law.”
Tibetans and Students for a Free Tibet activists are organizing similar protests in New York, Paris, Zurich, London, San Francisco, Toronto, New Delhi and Dharamsala, the exile home of the Dalai Lama in India.
