Murder in the High Himalaya
Publisher Public Affairs
Format304pp
Reviewed byVictor Saunders
DateWednesday, 18 January 2012
Rating
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In Murder in the High Himalaya Jonathan Green tells the story of the killing of 17 year old Kelsang Namtso, a novice nun who was shot dead by Chinese border guards in 2006. There was a lot of publicity surrounding her death, much of it contradictory. This book is an attempt to give a factual account of the events.
It tells the story of Tibetans escaping to India. For most of the Tibetans the escape is a pilgrimage to see the Dalai Lama. Many return to Tibet afterwards. In late September 2006 a group attempted to cross the Nangpa La near Cho Oyu. Some made the brutal traverse, others were captured by the PAP, the Chinese border guards, and one, Kelsang, was shot dead. Unusually all this was witnessed by several climbers from the base camp at Cho Oyu.
Green adopts the structure that worked so well in Galen Rowell's In the Throne Room of the Mountain Gods, alternating chapters from the Westerner's point of view with those of the Tibetans.
The Tibetan chapters lead up to the escape and give us a swift overview of Tibetan life under the Chinese. By the time we reach the escape route over the Nangpa La, we have become familiar with the main characters. So it is rather moving when, in a passage reminiscent of Younghusband's 1905 military expedition, there is the account of the nuns using pills which had been blessed and pictures of the Dalai Lama to ward off the Chinese bullets. We follow the harrowing tale of survivors' descent into Nepal [p169] and the sickening torture of the captured refugee Jamyang. The errors of topography or orientation slightly impede the flow of the story; Green has the refugees re-crossing the Nangpa La while fleeing while the captives are dragged off from the climbers' base camp to idling trucks nearby. In 2006 there was no road closer than several hours walk from the camp.
In the alternate chapters Green maps the growing paranoia of Luis Benitez, the western guide who sent the story by satellite before he thought through the consequences and how he was going to leave Tibet should the Chinese connect him with the story. This part too is well told, though Green does seem rather down on the commercial operators
who exhibit "the great evil of our age, cynicism...they secretly disdain their Chinese hosts but outwardly act as apologists for them” And I thought that it was only journalists who were like that.
Unfortunately for a supposedly factual account, one detects an underlying Sinophobia paired with a romantic attachment to all things ancient, especially ancient Tibetan. Examples of the former: the new railway to Lhasa is “a brazen statement to China's will... The Chinese are fed a steady diet of propaganda” and the Chinese “appeal to greed over human rights”. Their Olympic propaganda recalls that of the Nazis.
Meanwhile the Tibetans are imbued with an ancient sagacity. Westerners call it Everest, but the “Tibetans, without measuring instruments, already knew the peaks dominant status, they simply called it Qomolangma, Goddess Mother of the World”. That is what you see if you do an undiscerning internet trawl. Actually a little further investigation would have suggested the original meaning of Chomolungma – Green uses the Chinese spelling for this Tibetan word – has been debated for decades if not longer, and may actually be irretrievably lost. My favourite translation is Tibet scholar Edwin Bernbaum's interesting “Lady Immovable Good Cow” .
In other passages those historic folks are just better than the modern ones. Messner's “spiritual quest” and Hillary and Tenzing's “quiet nobility” are contrasted with modern “rampant egoism”. A little more study might take some of the gloss off his heroes. When the Chinese opened up the north side of Cho Oyu in 1987, Green says this led directly to the commercialisation of the peak and violence. Yet the example he gives of this in 1989 concerned two teams that were not commercial expeditions (ie those with guides and clients), and were operating on the Nepalese side of the hill, and not the Tibetan.
He seems to have been reading Ed Hillary's intemperate rant about modern commercial trips, and doing so uncritically. According to Green, commercial guiding outfits are known as the “brotherhood of the rope” and they “watch out for each other in the lawless frontier governed by the almighty dollar." This is news to me, and rather begs the question just how much does Green actually know about the mountains? And in what way does this develop the story of Kelsang?
I think the relevance of these passage to Kelsang is the implied culpability of the Westerners, who are accused of appeasement in the face of the human rights tragedy unfolding in Tibet, of which Kelsang's story is one small but highly visible part. But if we are to trust Green's judgement, we need to believe his accuracy in reporting.
Here I have a problem.
Green likes to attribute to his characters states of mind that cannot be known. Kelsang “was overcome with a greying melancholy... half-formed memories of her family” or "...the water felt silky and comforting in the darkness." I don't much care for that in a factual account, unless it is a direct quotation. I suppose that while not provable, these statements may not be actually untrue. One can even excuse hyperbole on grounds of cultural difference: “On the high passes.... there is no law or morality," and ““The east face of Everest knifed up into the jet stream more defiant and lawless than ever.” He is fond of his lawlessness.
There are however, several statements which are precisely incorrect. Here is a small selection of some of the factual errors: Green says that in 1995 Manual Bauer was the first and only Westerner to cross the Nangpa La successfully. Actually, the first ascentionists of Cho Oyu crossed the pass in 1954. About Russell Brice's climb of the northeast ridge: ”No one had attempted the route before.” (Oh please, DO read some history). “The Nangpa La is a keyhole pass between two 8000m peaks." (And some geography too!) The crevasses on the Nangpa La, he says, are a thousand feet deep.
In the last pages Green finally tells us what the stated aim of the book is. After a meeting with the Dalai Lama, he takes the great man's advice to “simply tell the truth”. Actually I quite like that, unpacking the hidden agenda at the end. It recalls Jim Perrin and his moral coercion trick, telling readers they have wasted their time reading so far if they disagree. I don't disagree with Jonathan Green. It is important to tell the truth, and in parts his book works well. But is it the simple truth?
As with all things Tibetan, telling the truth is anything but simple. There are more than two sides to this story, and every one seems seems to have a vested interest, and their own version of the story to propagate. So, perhaps a little inaccuracy here doesn't affect the main line of the story. Or, does it? I would like to say this is an important book, it is just that, if the fact checking on the easy things is so slack, what about the hard things? Has he made as many mistakes about China and Tibet as he has about mountains? I don't know, because that is not an area I know much about, but I don't trust
his accuracy.
Verdict? What should be an important book is marred by sloppy fact finding.
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