Remember the incident in Nangpa La pass last year? I blogged fairly extensively about it at the time. The incident involved a number of refugees from Tibet using the pass to sneak across the border into Nepal, but they were ambushed by the Chinese military, resulting in the death of a 25 year old nun, who was reportedly shot in the back, and the capture of more than a dozen young children.
The new broke because a group of climbers on Cho Oyu witnessed the incident, and actually filmed some of it from afar. When they returned from the mountain, they told the story to ExWeb and it filtered out to the rest of the Internet from there. The mainstream media followed some time later, although they were quite slow to pick up on the story and very little was made of it for the most part.
Well, now it seems that the top Chinese General in Tibet is being forced into early retirement over the incident. According to a quoted Forbes report, Lt. Gen. Meng Jinxi has taken criticism over the while affair, and now being forced to step down from his post. The General is also a part of the Chinese Communist Party's Central Committee, but the word is that he won't be invited to it's congress when it meets this Fall.
While this news doesn't really bring any justice to the family and friends of the nun who was gunned down, nor does it help the refugees who were injured or captured in the raid, it does show that someone is being held accountable for the whole affair. It took some time in coming, but at least we know that some diplomatic pressure somewhere put a little heat on the Chinese, even if it wasn't much of a public display.
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