12/14 Lhopsang’s Story
Today I went to another placement down the hill at Thangde Gatsel. I helped with some basic computer processes: file transfer and email help and while most of this occupied the computer I had some free time. With this time I got to talk to and hang out with a young painter who works and studies at the school. His name was Lhopsang and he was a Tibetan who came to India in his childhood. He opened his room home to me and shared some of the Tibetan story with me. I have been hearing about the atrocities of the Chinese, but this was the first time I had really experienced it. He started with a documentary that was nothing more than a speech in Berlin about an event that happened at the Nepal-Tibet border. The event was centered on a 15-year-old young girl who wanted to be a nun who was with a larger group of Tibetans who were hiking through the Himalayas towards Nepal. She was 30 minutes from the border after 22 days of walking when the Chinese Border Police saw them and began to open fire. A group of around 70 Tibetans were shot at and scattering when some mountaineers who heard the shots started filming the scene. They have film record of the young nun following in line and being shot from the top of a mountain. She falls and doesn’t get up. She crawls a few feet and stops. After the rest are gone, the police to and see the body. They appear to take pictures like hunters in America and that’s when the film stops. This was the first video to come out of the violence that occurs at the border. Lhopsang continued to tell me how when he was 6 or 7 he did the same type of trek and they got shot at too, but they were closer to the border so they were safe. He also told me a little of his schooling. He started school as soon as he got here, but he only went until he was 14 because then studied for 10 years at Thangde Gatsel. He doesn’t think he’ll ever go back to Tibet.
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