Mount_Everest_from_Rombok_Gompa%2C_Tibet
Mount Everest from Rongbuk Monastery

New Delhi(CNSNews.com) - China's plans to construct a 66 mile-long highway near Mount Everest is making environmentalists see red while other critics view the project as an attempt to legitimize Beijing's hold on occupied Tibet.

The road ostensibly is being built to transport the torch for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games to the base of the world's highest mountain, from where it will be carried to the summit. Everest lies on the border of Tibet and Nepal.

Critics say the road, along with several planned hotels, will endanger the fragile ecosystem of the snowbound area.

Environmental activists say construction will increase pollution through fuel-burning, the felling of trees and the accumulation of waste, and could enhance glacial fracturing. They worry this will add to problems already caused by the increase in numbers of pilgrims and tourists to the area due to the recent opening of Beijing-Lhasa railway track, the highest railway system in the world.

Tibet has been occupied by China since 1950 and human rights groups say it rules the Himalayan territory with an iron hand, prohibiting democracy and free expression. Tibetans maintain a government-in-exile in northern India.

Tenzin Tsultrim, head of the environment and development desk in the exiled government, told Cybercast News Service on Friday that "for last fifty years, especially in Tibet, China has carried out massive development projects with complete negligence of social responsibility."

Tsultrim described the railway system as "environmentally destructive" as it had been planned "without consulting the local population."

Syed Iqbal Hasnain, a senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi, and a renowned glaciologist, said a road like the one planned by the Chinese "can completely change the ecosystem dynamics."

Describing glaciers as super-fragile systems, Hasnain argued that "if indirect impacts of [global] warming can be seen so dramatically, direct human intervention would be even more dangerous."

Everest has long been the subject of environmentalists' concerns. Japanese mountaineer Ken Noguchi, a leading campaigner for cleaning up the peak, has removed nearly 9,000 kilograms of trash over five trips. He believes there could be several tons of garbage still in the area.

Human rights activists also believe the road construction forms part of China's attempts to demolish Tibet's cultural and natural heritage.

Officials of the exiled government stated that the ongoing construction activity was China's way of asserting its "tenuous claims to sovereignty over Tibet."

Qiangba Puncog, chairman of Tibet Autonomous Regional government -- a Chinese authority -- said the road was needed because of foreigners' complaints about poor transportation.

Tibet's spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, who fled to India in 1959 after an abortive uprising against the occupation, has described the construction projects as a "second invasion" of Tibet, a region that is heavily guarded by the army, and where foreigners' movements are restricted.

Rights activists recall that when it made a bid to host the 2008 Olympics, Beijing's communist government had promised press freedom "all over China" -- which in China's official view includes Tibet. They say the torch relay is an attempt to camouflage the human misery and reality in Tibet with glitzy malls and technological marvels.

Repeatedly accused of human right violations and environmental damage, China has an estimated 150 Tibetan political prisoners in detention. It recently deported five American tourists after they demonstrated for a free Tibet.

Officials at the Chinese Embassy in New Delhi, including the mission's press coordinator, declined to answer any questions about the planned road or associated concerns.

The Indian government has made no comment on the issue, and the right-wing opposition BJP party has criticized New Delhi, calling it "clueless about the whole development." Yashwant Sinha, a former External Affairs Minister now in opposition, said the Chinese plan "has security implications for India."

The BJP also is unhappy about China's move to build eleven dams on the Brahmaputra river for electricity generation, thus diverting water from India (The river originates in Tibet, flows through the Himalayas, and later merges with the Ganges.)

Tsultrim agreed the dams could have "detrimental impacts on lives of the downstream population."

It's bad enough that Everest (which is a sacred place, remember) is cluttered up with tourists, litter and dead bodies.

How long can the world ignore China's desecration of Tibet? Unfortunately the great majority of Chinese have no idea of the reality that is happening in Tibet, and the western view is that its 'unfortunate' but business is business. Cheap Chinese imports are more important to the world than the Tibetan genocide.

If I were India I would be worried too.

IMHO, it's time governments threatened to boycott the Olympic Games. What if China held a party and nobody came? I don't think they'd want to risk it.

See Woolly's blog for an account much better than I could give of the background to this.