Video footage shot by a Romanian television station appears to show Chinese soldiers firing at a group of Tibetans as they attempt to cross a mountain pass into Nepal, days after China defended the soldiers' action.
The video, taken by Romania's Pro TV, shows a line of people trekking through the snow when sounds of gunfire are heard and one of the figures crumples to the ground. The footage is shot from too far away to make out identities, but a voice can be heard saying in English, "They are shooting them like dogs".
A group of climbers from Britain and Australia told Reuters last week that on September 30 they watched Chinese border guards take aim at a group of 20 to 30 people as they prepared to cross from Chinese territory into Nepal.
Tibet has been ruled by China since Communist troops invaded in 1950, and the government deals harshly with Tibetans who press for greater political and religious freedoms.
Hundreds of people cross the Himalayas to Nepal every year, most of them en route to the Indian hill station of Dharamsala, the home of their spiritual leader the Dalai Lama and Tibet's government-in-exile. China's state media has confirmed that troops fired on about 70 people near the frontier with Nepal and that one of them died.
But it defended the shooting, saying the group was trying to cross the border illegally and attacked the soldiers when they tried to persuade the group to return home. The video shows no such confrontation, and the London-based International Campaign for Tibet, which said a Tibetan nun was killed in the incident, rejected China's defence.
"It is deplorable that the People's Armed Police act as if shooting Tibetans crossing into Nepal is a legitimate expression of their authority," Mary Beth Markey, the group's executive director, said in a statement.
In another sign of unrest in the isolated region, a group of Tibetans forced the delay of a Canadian mining company's operations, angered over test-drilling. Vancouver-based Continental Minerals Corp said it was drilling near a village about 3 km (2 miles) from the main area of operations for its Xietongmen copper-gold project, near the Tibet city of Shigatse, on June 19 when residents raised concerns.
But it denied reports from a Tibet independence group that a serious confrontation occurred. "We delayed work in this particular area until the concerns had been addressed to the satisfaction of all the local community and then the activities resumed," Shari Gardiner, a spokeswoman for Continental, wrote in an e-mail response to Reuters.
"Work in our main area of operations continued as normal throughout this period," she said. "At no time did the villagers ask us to leave Tibet." Continental, wholly owned by private miner Hunter Dickinson Inc, holds its interests in the Xietongmen site through a local company, Tibet Tian Yuan Minerals Exploration Ltd. The exploration licence for the site, also known as Shethongmon, was issued by China's Ministry of Land and Resources.
Students for a Free Tibet called on the company to withdraw from the region. "This incident again demonstrates that Canadian and other mining firms have no business in Tibet until the Tibetan people are in a position to decide the use of their own natural resources," the group's executive director, Lhadon Tethong, said in a statement.
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