Posted: Oct 18, 2007 11:28 am EDT
(MountEverest.net) Last year, independent mountaineer David Sharp lay helpless on Mount Everest. Himex commercial expedition stepped pass him on the way to the summit, and again on the way down. The climber was left to die, after being interviewed on camera for the Discovery channel.

When it became known, the mountaineers said they only followed orders of their expedition leader, Russell Brice. Brice in turn issued a press release, denying knowledge. No investigation was made by the Chinese authorities and no more questions were asked.

A few months later, two Tibetan refugees were shot in their backs on Nangpa La pass, before the eyes of hundreds of climbers. The mountain fell silent, until an American guide stepped forward and emailed ExplorersWeb. His report spurred a few more climbers to send pictures and videos of the murders, silencing China's claims that they shot in self defense. Climbers said that some commercial leaders, naming Himex specifically, had been key to the cover up, threatening climbers who wanted to speak.

A few months later again, the Discovery channel aired a worldwide series about Himex Everest climb, but offered no details on David Sharp and refused to release their interview with the dying mountaineer.

Brice, "Are you fucking crazy?"

In a large Men's Journal article this month, titled "Murder at 19,000 feet" it is stated that after the American mountain guide (6-times Everest summiteer Luis Benitez) sent his email to ExplorersWeb from Nangpa La, he confined to his assistant guide, Paul Rogers, that he'd sent the note. Immediately afterward, Luis said, Rogers "did a Judas" and went straight to Russell Brice.

"Russell Brice dropped the sage, avuncular manner of his television persona and became enraged," states the article. Brice, with Rogers at his side, stormed down the hill, "Paul told me you sent an email to ExplorersWeb," Brice accused Benitez. "Are you trying to get us kicked out of the country?" He began jabbing his finger at the younger guide. "Are you fucking crazy?"

Brice was mad at Luis and felt no compassion for the nun - instead he treated the Chinese soldiers who killed her for snow blindness shortly after the shooting.

To get the proper picture, one must realize that the soldiers were shooting only 50 meters (150 ft) from camp, and the refugees ran only 100 meters (300 ft) away from the climbers.

Henry Todd: "You should be fucking hung out to dry"

Everest commercial expedition leader Henry Todd is infamous for his violent temper and jail time ('Operation Julie' UK drug bust) but most of all for the supplementary oxygen he sells on Everest, without manufacturers disclosure. Only last year, a case for manslaughter was dropped without trial by a UK judge against Todd in relation to his oxygen. Henry is married to Brice's base camp manager and 45 minutes after lashing out at Luis, Russell returned with Todd.

"You should be fucking hung out to dry for what you have done," Todd yelled at Benitez. "I think your name has been given to the Chinese," Todd hissed, trying to intimidate Benitez. "If I were you I would leave ahead of your group, or you will get the into trouble."

China's kiss of death

A few months back, ExWeb ran a story about the recent Everest spring season. We recounted how the Chinese torch rehearsal expedition expelled protesters, erected a fence around their camp with armed military personnel minding the entrances and how China denied entry to Prague's mayor Pavel Bern, in spite of visa and climbing permit, reportedly for being too outspoken against the regime.

Shortly after the article, a message arrived that China plans to restrict climbing on Everest next year. Expeditions will be screened, and limited.

Himex is cleared though; "Everest expedition dates: 30 March - 08 June 2008," reads Russell’s current website ad.

For two weeks in August 1936, Nazi dictatorship camouflaged its racist, militaristic character while hosting the Summer Olympics. "The sportive, knightly battle awakens the best human characteristics. It doesn't separate, but unites the combatants in understanding and respect. He also helps to connect the countries in the spirit of peace. That's why the Olympic Flame should never die,” said Adolf Hitler.

China planting the Olympic torch on top of Tibet's greatest pride; Chomolongma, Mother Earth, will be the final insult to the occupied people; a kiss of death broadcast to the world. Judging from his behavior on Nangpa La; Russell Brice will help to make sure that nothing smudges the event.

Discovery might even get the first shots.

China is getting bolder

Meanwhile, the Chinese government is getting bolder. Only yesterday, China jumped US President George W. Bush’s private meeting with the Dalai Lama in the White House, saying it was a “gross interference in China’s internal affairs.”

This was the fourth time Bush met with Dalai Lama, but it is the first time a sitting president appears publicly together with Tibet's spiritual leader. Bush said he wanted to show his support for religious freedom. Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao shot back that US should stop interfering in China’s own business.

After a previous meeting in 2005, the foreign ministry spokesman said at a regular news briefing, "the Dalai Lama is not a simple or a pure religious figure. He is a political exile who undertakes secessionist activities abroad. We oppose meetings between him and other leaders."

The statement simply means that China wants to have a right to dictate who world leaders should meet - on third party grounds. That's like Bush prohibiting Putin to meet with Castro in Cuba. Or refusing him permission to climb Pike's Peak.

Democracy is bullshit, said the guide

"This free Tibet thing is bullshit," Rogers told Benitez according to the Men’s Journal article. "The Chinese have done more for Tibet than you know."

Unfortunately we can't ask the Tibetans. That's the whole point of democracy, which Tibet doesn't have.

Romanian Sergiu Matei was one of the few climbers who talked on Nangpa La and he didn't share Paul Rogers' view on Tibet at all, "I've been there, I saw that," he said in his dispatch. "Tibet is a country under communist occupation. Tibetans are slowly losing their identity – which is exactly what Chinese intend. Tibetans are treated as a sub-human race in their own country. If one speaks or wears upon a portrait of the Dalai Lama, one is put in jail.”

The Chinese say that there is religious freedom in Tibet, regulated by the law. Dalai Lama's successor is traditionally chosen by reincarnation, yet in July 2007, Chinese authorities issued a regulation that requires all reincarnations - including the Dalai Lama - to be approved by the government.

"Our guerilla could have held them off on the passes"

It has been said that victory goes to the one who wants it most. In the movie "Seven years in Tibet" some monks resented that they had given up too fast. They were low in numbers, but in battle, "numbers alone confer no advantage," said the Chinese Sun Tzu himself in The Art of War. A lesson painfully learned by both Soviet and the US on several occasions.

"Our guerilla could have held the Chinese off on the passes, giving us time to negotiate help from the world," the monks reportedly told Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer.

The Buddhist approach

The Dalai Lama tried the Buddhist approach to the bitter end, even exchanging poems with Mao, until he finally fled to India in 1959. Before the Chinese came in and took over in 1949, Tibet had 5 million people and was a sovereign state independent of China. One million Tibetans have since been killed, and 6,000 monasteries have been ruined. Today the Tibetan people are a minority in their own country.

At the time of the Nangpa La shootings, the Dalai Lama didn't comment, he was busy at a social event and in fact seemed annoyed with the publicity. "Why is that?" we asked Save Tibet. To this question, we received no reply.

Speaking about the ongoing talks with the Chinese government, the Dalai Lama told media that he is seeking autonomy for Tibet, not independence. That's not a great strategy when negotiating for freedom. "They [China] seem to have hardened their position and attitude," Dalai Lama actually admits.

The voice of Tibet

Today, all the better jobs go to the Chinese people living in Tibet. This doesn't mean that the Chinese themselves are happy with the situation - many of them suffer greatly under the current dictatorship.

The voice of Tibet is now merely a rasp in the wind, its colorful history a shadow of the past. Gangsters rule their side of Mount Everest; international mountaineers watch in silence as their children are shot. Journalists fight for media access to the Chinese Olympics and Rupert Murdoch has a villa in Beijing.

Luis Benitez is currently leading a new group of climbers on Ama Dablam. So are Brice's and Todd's people. In addition to the serac that collapsed and killed 6 mountaineers on the peak last year, Luis has other reasons to watch his back.

A few people

"Outside is doing a story about our expedition but I wish it was Men's Journal," an adventure friend told us a while back. Real stories are seldom found in printed outdoor media. Each time we publish them, we receive threats. In addition to mails bashing us for being mean to Russell Brice who seems so nice on TV.

Luis said that he did what he had to in order to be able to live with himself. Heinrich Harrer said he learned his lessons the hard way, from his time in the SS. We started ExplorersWeb as an outlet for explorers' buzz that nobody would print.

A few people can make a big difference in this world. Aristotle, a single man, could not be silenced. Emperors and Popes ordered for his books about democracy to be burned and his followers to be prosecuted. Yet his scripts were rescued and translated from Greek to Arabic, then to Latin, and finally back to Greek again over a thousand years.

We have learned why nobody helped the nun on Nangpa La. We still don't know why nobody helped David Sharp. And the question remains if Tibet can be saved. But thanks to a few brave souls, the truth has got another chance.

The Men's Journal article, by Jonathan Green, is printed in the November issue (volume 16). Brice, Todd and Rogers refused the Journal's offer to comment Benitez' statements. Asked about ExplorersWeb by Outside magazine for an article in the June 2007 issue, Henry Todd told the journalist (Bryant Urstadt), "We regard these people as totally absurd," calling the founders "a pair of complete idiots, utterly ludicrous." Russell Brice said, "I have never had anything to do with them in the past and have no intention of having anything to do with them in the future, including making comments about their comments." ExplorersWeb have offered both to have their say, which they declined, except for Todd's lawyers who sent threatening emails.

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