Everest Off Limits Amid Tibet Unrest
Sun Herald
Sunday March 23, 2008
EXPEDITIONS to Mount Everest are being cancelled because of restrictions on access to Tibet as China prepares to put the Olympic torch on the summit and clamps down on unrest in the Himalayan region, an organiser said.
Russell Brice, a New Zealander and leading Himalayan expedition organiser, said he had called off plans to send clients up the Tibetan side of the world's highest peak and that other teams were also cancelling. "I cancelled my expedition three days ago. I think most people on the north side are cancelling and some are trying to shift to the south side [of the mountain in Nepal]," he said from his office in the French Alps. He said his 16 clients this year, who pay tens of thousands of dollars each to try to reach the top of the world, "have taken time off work, been training, got themselves mentally prepared - so it's a huge blow for them". China yesterday turned its back on appeals for dialogue with the Dalai Lama, vowing to smash anti-China forces in Tibet, where it said the death toll in recent unrest had risen to 19. A day after Beijing launched a manhunt for monks and others it blamed for unrest in Tibet, a defiant editorial in the Chinese Communist Party's People's Daily said opposition to Chinese rule in the Himalayan region must be wiped out. "China must resolutely crush the conspiracy of sabotage and smash 'Tibet independence forces'," the newspaper said in the editorial.
© 2008 Sun Herald