Published by: World Tibet Network News Wednesday, January 14, 1998

TIN News Update / 14 January, 1998 / total no of pages: 2

Six Tibetans, five of them children, died in attempts to escape from Tibet last month after severe snowstorms hit the Himalayan passes, according to survivors who reached Kathmandu.

Five of the deaths occurred after a three day storm near Mount Everest in early December, trapping at least one group of refugees near the top of the Nangpa-la, the 5,700 metre pass used by most Tibetans trying to escape to Nepal. A sixth death occurred on 24th December when a second group had to walk through waist high snow to reach Nepal.

The first group, which consisted of 22 Tibetans, six of them children and seven of them women, had already crossed the Nangpa-la pass, about 100 km west of Everest, but were still high in the mountains when they were caught in the storm on 3rd December.

The group was unable to move during the three days of the storm and on day four began walking through the snow, by then over a metre deep, and chest high in places, according to survivors.

On 9th December, after walking for one and a half days, Ka-lo, an 10 year old boy, and a girl of the same age called Shilok died from hunger and exposure. Shilok's older sister, Phurbu Drolma, aged 11, also died. The bodies of the children were covered with blankets and left in the mountain.

On 10th December, three days after walking down from the pass, the group reached a small Nepalese village, but it was too late to save a fourth child, an 11 year old girl called Drolma, who died at about 1.30 that afternoon.

The children were being sent to Nepal in order to join schools run by the exile Tibetan government in India, and many of the older members of the group were hoping to join monasteries or nunneries in India. Between 400 and 500 children under 14 are sent illegally from Tibet each year to join the exile schools.

A 16 year old monk from Kandze in eastern Tibet who was in the group also died shortly after crossing the mountain into Nepal. The monk, Sonam Tashi, died on 25th December while other members of the group were carrying him from the village of Khari-khola, 20 km south of Namche Bazaar, to a local hospital. One report said he had died because of exposure, but another source said the death may have been caused by acute appendicitis. His body was cremated at Nanthala, the village where he died.

The remaining members of the group were given assistance by two British tourists who were trekking in the region. "While we were having tea in a restaurant a Tibetan girl came and sat next to us," said one of the tourists, who asked not to be named. "She took off her shoes and showed us her feet, which were badly frost bitten. When the others arrived we saw that some were in a worse condition than her," he added.

The couple, both from Edinburgh in Scotland, hired four porters to carry the girl, a 23 year old nun, to the hospital at Khunde, established by the mountaineer Sir Edmund Hillary near Namche Bazaar, 140 km north east of Kathmandu.

One of the tourists carried an 11 year old child, the youngest in the group to have survived, to the hospital about half a days' walk away, and then trekked after the rest of the group to help them contact local police, who arranged for horses to carry them to a nearby refugee camp and later flew them to Kathmandu, where the refugees arrived on 29th December.

The surviving members of the group were given treatment for frostbite in Kathmandu, and on 1st January one of the group, a 22 year old man called Taga from eastern Tibet, had both his legs amputated just below the knee, in a case described by one specialist as "the worst I have ever seen".

Two men from the group in their twenties have already had their toes amputated on one or both feet, and three others are expected to lose toes or part of their feet. The refugees had been wearing thick clothes but, like most of the refugees, had only light footwear or running shoes.

- 2 year old Child Dies, 21st December -

A sixth death was reported by a group who reached the first settlements in the Nubri area of Nepal, 130 km north-west of Kathmandu, on 24th December. The group, which consisted of 26 Tibetans, was given shelter by locals in the village, but said that a 2 year old child had died from the cold three days earlier, just after they had crossed the pass, when they had been walking through waist high snow.

"On the morning of 25th December two Tibetans came to the house where we were staying and asked for medicine for frostbite," said Hyoung Woo Kim, a 29 year old mountaineer from Korea who was in the village after completing an attempt on Mount Manaslu, an 8100 metre peak. "We went to see the group, and one man and two of the women had frostbitten feet and toes", he said.

The Koreans and a local Sherpa arranged for the three frostbite cases and two others to be flown with them by helicopter to Kathmandu, after one member of the team offered to give up his place and to arrange for the team's equipment and supplies to be offloaded from the helicopter and carried instead by foot to Kathmandu.

Tashi Tsomo, a 14 year old girl from Eastern Tibet who was among those flown to Kathmandu, is expected to lose all the toes on her right foot, and a boy from the same area will lose some of his toes, according to reports from the city.

The rest of the group arrived in Kathmandu, where the UN arranges safe passage for refugees to join the exile Tibetan community in India, on 2nd January. "What else could we do but help them?" said Mr Kim, one of the Korean tourists. "They look like us Koreans, we share the same ancestors, and we were all very worried about them," he said.

Mr Kim praised local Sherpas for going out of their way to help the refugees, and the British tourists also described the local police in Khari-Khola as conscientious and helpful.

The police in Kathmandu hand over Tibetan refugees to the local office of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, which allows those whom it considers to be genuine cases of concern to travel on to India. There are frequent reports of refugees being harassed or having to pay bribes to police in border areas, and in one case last November eleven Tibetans were repatriated by Nepalese border guards after they refused to pay a bribe of 20,000 rupees (c.US $3,200). However, an increasing number of recent reports describe some Nepali police as co-operative.

Over 2,200 Tibetan refugees arrived in Nepal last year, nearly half of them in the last three months. About 500 of the arrivals last year were children under 14 sent from Tibet to join exile government schools or monasteries in India; about 1,000 were monks or nuns. The number of escapees increases in the winter months after the harvest is completed, apparently because there are less guards on the borders during the winter months.