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	Refugees tell of Tibet Ordeal by AP/ AFP Tibet / India   25.10.2006.   Tibetan refugees in India have spoken about their escape from Chinese soldiers who shot at them as they fled to Nepal three weeks ago, killing one teenage nun on the spot.   The refugees, many of them children, were among a group of 75 Tibetans making a secret 22-day trek across the border into Nepal near the 5,800-metre-high Nanpa La Pass, when Chinese border guards opened fire on them on September 30, sending them running for cover.   One woman — a 25-year-old Buddhist nun — was killed immediately, group members said. Chinese officials, in a statement apparently about the shooting, have said a second person also died.   "There was no warning of any kind. The bullets were so close I could hear them whizzing past," Thubten Tsering, a Tibetan monk, told journalists in New Delhi. "We scattered and ran."   Mr Thubten is among 41 of the refugees who survived the shooting and reached India. The survivors said they do not know the fate of 32 others, including nine children, who were taken into custody by the guards.   "We don"t know where they are or what happened to them," Mr Thubten, his chapped cheeks and exhausted face still bearing the scars of the ordeal.   Footage of the incident, shot by a Romanian cameraman on a mountaineering expedition, sparked an international outcry.   The footage, released by Romania"s Pro TV, shows a distant figure that its narrator says is a Chinese border guard firing a rifle and a separate scene of a person in a line of figures walking through the snow then falling to the ground.   An unidentified man near the camera can be heard saying in English, "They are shooting them like, like dogs."   The activist group International Campaign for Tibet, in a written statement, said the video proves Chinese troops fired at unarmed Tibetans and counters a statement from Beijing that its forces were attacked and fired in self-defence.   The pass is a common escape route for fleeing Tibetans. Thousands have left for Nepal since communist forces occupied their Himalayan homeland in 1951. Many make their way to the north Indian town of Dharmsala, the home of the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate.   Every year more than 2,500 Tibetan refugees attempt the arduous trek, said Tenzing Norgay of the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, which arranged a news conference for the survivors in New Delhi on Monday.   The Chinese government has said its border forces killed one person when they clashed with some 70 people trying to leave the country illegally. It said a second person died later. But it said Chinese forces were attacked and acted in self-defence. The statement didn"t say whether those involved were Tibetans.   Asked about his life in a monastery in Tibet where the monks are under the constant watch of Chinese security forces and under pressure to denounce the Dalai Lama, Mr Thubten said simply: "It was stifling."   "Being a monk who has taken a vow to live by the faith, we were always under threat from the Chinese political authorities," he said.   Dolma Palkyid, a 15-year-old novice nun, was a close friend of Kelsang Nortso, the nun who was killed.   "I had walked ahead and we got separated. Then the shooting took place and we fled. It was four days later that I heard Kelsang was the one who was shot," she said, speaking tearfully through an interpreter.   Once in India, the friends were hoping to join another Buddhist nunnery together, said the red-cheeked teenager dressed in a traditional ankle-length gown.   The group of Tibetan refugees had each paid 5,000 yuan (A$827) to a guide to arrange the trip. They set off in mid-September, assured that the 10-day trek would deliver them to Nepal.   There have been instances of refugees being shot at by border guards in the past, but this was the first time in recent years that troops killed any, said Mr Tenzing of the human rights group.   "This is the first time that the world has seen evidence of what Tibetans are subjected to by the Chinese," said Mr Tenzing.   "Kelsang"s death cannot go in vain. We will use this incident and the video footage to bring international pressure on China and press for Tibetan freedom."
	Counter-terrorism should not undermine Human Rights by UN News   25 October 2006   Counter-terrorism should not undermine rights to assembly or association: UN expert.   Countries need to pay “increased attention” to ensuring that critical basic freedoms – of peaceful assembly and of association – are not unduly compromised in the fight against terrorism and that any restrictive measures be “necessary, proportionate and subject to judicial safeguards,” an independent United Nations expert warned today.   Protecting these rights was fundamental because they serve as the platform for the exercise of other rights, such as freedom of expression and the right to political participation, Martin Scheinin, Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms while Countering Terrorism, told the General Assembly’s Third Committee which deals with human, social and cultural rights.   Governments listing entities as terrorist organizations should also be done only on a temporary basis – and automatically reviewed every 6 to 12 months – so as “not to amount to criminal sanctions,” which would require acceptable rules of evidence and procedure, he said.   “It is my firm conviction that sanction regimes that incorporate human rights guarantees are in the long run more efficient tools against terrorism than arrangements falling short of international standards,” Mr. Scheinin said.   “There is growing support for the position that human rights are not a mandatory concession that compromises the effective fight against terrorism but, rather, a cornerstone of any successful strategy against terrorism,” he added.   Mr. Scheinin later told a press conference that defining terrorism is central to his mandate because “as long as there is no internationally agreed understanding of what terrorism is, and is not, governments often feel free to define as terrorist whatever they wish to outlaw.”   “This leads to a huge degree of abuse…minorities, indigenous people, religious movements…may all be stigmatized as terrorists and then authoritarian governments tend to criminalize their actions,” he added.   Against what he said were some overly broad definitions, terrorism should be defined by the choice of tactics, i.e., attacks on innocent bystanders.   Mr. Scheinin said although his mandate includes highlighting “best practices in the fight against terrorism” this has not resulted in many invitations for country visits.   23 October 2006   States still show a ‘lack of awareness’ over torture but it must be criminalized.   States are still showing a “lack of awareness” over the seriousness of torture, despite the fact they are obligated to criminalize the practice, an independent United Nations expert said today, warning that few cases are ever brought to justice and where they are, the perpetrators generally get away with minor sentences.   “What is always strange to me if I go on a country mission and then speak to high Governmental officials, speak to the heads of prisons, of police stations etc, is a lack of awareness that torture is one of the most serious human rights violations,” the UN Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, Manfred Nowak, told reporters in New York.   “The Convention against torture [adopted more than 20 years ago] is very clear: it says States have an obligation to criminalize torture with adequate sanctions and if we look what the Committee against torture says is adequate, that is a prison sentence where the maximum penalty should be at least 10 years or more.”   “Torture is a very, very serious human rights violation and there is a wide practice of impunity; very, very few cases are actually brought to justice and then even when people are finally sentenced then they get these kind of disciplinary sanctions or it’s treated as a misdemeanour.”   “I spent much of my time in relation to the question of the relationship between torture and counter-terrorism strategies. In particular after 9/11 the absolute prohibition of torture has been put into question, not only by academics but also by Governments, in saying you have to balance the prohibition of torture with national security concerns.”   However, quoting from the UN Convention against torture, Mr. Nowak points out that it states that “no information, no confession that is established to have been extracted by torture shall be used as evidence in any proceedings.”
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