Chinese Guards Tortured Captured Tibetans, Says Teenage Survivor

More than 30 Tibetans were tortured and incarcerated in a labour camp after their bid to escape across the Himalayas from their homeland failed when Chinese border guards fired on the unarmed group, according to a survivor.

In the first reported account of what happened to those taken from the Himalayas, 15-year-old Jamyang Samten said that he was one of a number of Tibetans who ended up being electrocuted and forced to dig ditches "as a warning" to others.

Samten was part of a group of 75 people who were making their way over the 5,800-metre high Nangpa La Pass last September when Chinese guards opened fire. At least two people - including a Buddhist nun - were killed.

The incident was filmed by a Romanian television producer on a mountaineering expedition, sparking an international outcry. Beijing had claimed that the refugees were shot when border guards were attacked.

Forty-one of the refugees managed to reach India after the shooting, but 32 others were caught and detained. The teenager said he was captured and interrogated over a three-day period during which he was repeatedly hit with an electric cattle prod.

"It went on until I fainted," Samten told reporters, adding that police repeatedly asked him to identify the dead nun.

After three days, the Tibetans were taken by truck to a prison in Shigatse, Tibet's second-largest city, Samten said.

They were questioned again while chained to a wall, he said. "A guard wearing a metal glove would hit us in the stomach," Samten said.

Samten was held there for 48 days in a labour camp where he was forced to dig ditches, build fences and work on fields. Once he was released, the teenager simply paid "guides" to take him via Nepal to India where the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan leader, has been based since 1959.

"He wanted to come to see His Holiness [the Dalai Lama] and he also wanted an education in the Tibetan language," Tsering Ngodup, who works with the Tibetan refugee centre in Dharmsala, told the Guardian.

Although the teenager's account is impossible to verify, it echoes the stories of Tibetans who have made the arduous trek through the snows.

Lobsang Gyaltsen, who managed to escape when Samten was captured, said that he feared for his family in Tibet. "I do not know if they are safe. We come here to learn about our language and culture. These things are hard in Tibet where we do not have freedom."

Mr Gyaltsen said that he been walking for 17 days when the Chinese guards had caught up with the group. They had eaten little and spent days wading through deep snow and struggling over ice and rock.

More than 4,000 Tibetans flee across the border into Nepal every year, undaunted by the fact it runs through several of the highest mountains on earth, including Mount Everest.

Supporters of the Dalai Lama say that China runs a repressive police state in Tibet, ruthlessly crushing dissent. Beijing regards Buddhism's most senior religious figure as a leading a separatist movement in exile.

With a new railway linking mainland China to Lhasa, Tibet's capital, Beijing has tightened its grip on the province. "China has become emboldened over Tibet. They have a 'strike hard' policy because nobody dares to raise the issue of with them. Of course that won't stop Tibetans leaving," said Phunchok Stobdan, an expert in Indo-Tibetan affairs.