NEW DELHI: Tension continues to prevail on Indo-China border in a remote border region in Eastern Ladakh after local Nomads pelted stones at a Chinese patrolling unit in early January after they were allegedly denied access to their traditional grazing pastures.
A report in The Wire on Tuesday quoting locals and officials said that the clash took place on January 2 in Kakjung area of Nyoma village in Chushul Valley of Ladakh on border with Tibet to the east, a region controlled by China.
The report said that a group of local herders was intercepted at Patrolling Point 35, 36 and 37 in Dungti village of Nyoma along with border with China by about a dozen visibly unarmed soldiers of People’s Liberation Army (PLA), who were accompanied by three armoured vehicles.
A video clip of the clash was shared by Kunsang Namjal, an Instagram user, which shows a herder using a rope as a sling to pelt stones at the incoming PLA vehicles, while the PLA soldiers and other herders purportedly ask him to calm down.
“Why have you come here? Why have you brought your vehicles here,” the herder can be seen shouting at a PLA soldier in Tibetan language, as the siren of one of the PLA armoured vehicles blares in the background.
He continued: “This is our ancestral land. We graze our livestock here.”
The 9-minute, 50-second video shows the PLA soldiers and the herders getting into a heated argument as they come face to face. The video shows one batch of Chinese soldiers, led by an armoured vehicle, pushing the herders and their livestock back.
Chushul Councillor Konchok Stanzin, who posted the video on X, formerly Twitter, said that nomads put up a brave face when the PLA soldiers stopped their livestock from grazing. “Livelihoods of locals have been taken away in the name of buffer zones and patrolling points. Our nomads are struggling for their land,” Stanzin said.
A report in The Telegraph said that Ladakhi nomads were earning praise for apparently resisting the Chinese army’s attempts to drive them out of a grazing area in the larger Nyoma region earlier this month.
A few nomads can also be seen picking up stones and slamming them to the ground in frustration.
The nomads appear to have a heated argument with more than a dozen unarmed PLA soldiers, accompanied by siren-blowing armoured military vehicles, who were waving at them to leave the place along with their flock of animals.
The nomads apparently left the grazing field, with Chinese soldiers following them to ensure they were gone.
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