Village headman's home attacked

Following is translation of a Tibetan language blog entry about "An incident near Kokonor Lake (News)" that was posted on January 22, 2009. Lake Kokonor is called ????????? (Tso Ngon) in Tibetan. Tso Ngon means Blue Lake. The Chinese also has the same name in their language, which is Qinghai for Blue Lake. Lake Kokonor is the largest lake on the Tibetan Plateau (and in China). Reports indicate that the lake is shrinking due to climate warming, desertification and human encroachment.

[Photo courtesy of Wikipedia]

"An incident near Kokonor Lake (news)"
by Samten la



In recent years, an increasing number of fishermen around Amdo's Lake Kokonor have been catching a lot of fish and occupying pastures around the lake which belong to the region's nomads. So recently, the headman of Mogra village told the fishermen that they cannot fish here anymore and must immediately go away from the region. That night around seven to eight men, carrying different weapons with their faces covered in black cloth, came to the headman's house. Luckily the headman was not home that night. But the masked men severely assaulted the whole family and damaged their motorcycle and car and ran away. Next day on hearing the news, more than a thousand local people gathered and called for the fishing activity to stop immediately and asked them to go back. When a fight was about to break, the police came and arrested the suspects who came to kill the headman and the local nomads went home.

[end]
Translated by Yungdung Nyima of www.ecotibet.org