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    Boot Found at Everest Could Be From Sandy Irvine, Who Vanished 100 Years Ago

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    When Sandy Irvine went on a pioneering expedition to Mount Everest’s summit in 1924, he and his partner vanished. The recent discovery may shed light on the ill-fated adventure.A well-preserved boot found by a group of climbers on Mount Everest could be a clue to solving one of the most enduring adventure mysteries in the history of exploration of the world’s highest peak.The climbers who made the discovery in late September have reason to believe that it could contain some of the remains of Andrew Comyn Irvine, 22, whose ascent with an expert climber in an attempt to be the first to reach the summit in 1924 led to their disappearance.The recent explorers, from a National Geographic film crew, were on a glacier below the north face of Everest when they spotted a brown leather boot sticking out of the ice.Looking closer, they noticed a sock with a patch sewed to it that spelled “A.C. Irvine” in stitched red letters.“We just kind of walked around, like for a few minutes, being like, ‘Are you kidding me?’” Jimmy Chin, a mountaineer and filmmaker, said of the find. “We just stumbled upon one of the great discoveries of our time.”In April 1924, Mr. Irvine, a talented engineer but inexperienced climber from Birkenhead, England, who was better known as Sandy, joined George Mallory, a British mountaineer renowned for having reached 27,000 feet above sea level on Mount Everest in 1922.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Elections

      Nancy Pelosi Meets With Dalai Lama, Despite China’s Criticism

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      The former House speaker joined a congressional delegation that met with the Tibetan spiritual leader at his home in India. China calls him a separatist.A high-level U.S. congressional delegation, including the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, met with the Dalai Lama at his Indian home on Wednesday, a visit that was condemned in advance by China’s government, which considers the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader a separatist.The delegation, led by Michael McCaul, the Republican chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, arrived on Tuesday in the Himalayan town of Dharamsala, where the Dalai Lama has lived since the 1960s. The delegation visited the offices of the Tibetan government in exile, which is pushing for autonomy for Tibet within China.The trip comes days after Congress passed a bill with bipartisan support that urged China to start dialogue with Tibetan leaders to find a solution to the longstanding conflict.China’s criticism of the visit was immediate and unsurprising. Its leaders consider the government in exile illegal and regard any support for the cause of autonomy for Tibet, which they call Xizang, as interference in internal Chinese matters.“We urge the U.S. side to fully recognize the anti-China separatist nature of the Dalai group, honor the commitments the U.S. has made to China on issues related to Xizang, stop sending the wrong signal to the world,” the Chinese Embassy in New Delhi said in a statement on Tuesday night. U.S. officials have often met with the Dalai Lama, 88. Ms. Pelosi’s presence in the delegation, however, brought reminders of her 2022 trip to Taiwan, the self-governing island that China claims as its territory, when she was still speaker of the House.That contentious visit, which raised fears within the Biden administration of further deteriorating an already frosty relationship with Beijing, led to a sharp response from China, including trade restrictions on Taiwan and military exercises near the island.The visit to India also comes as Washington and New Delhi deepen their relationship, motivated in part by the perception of a shared Chinese threat. Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser, is in New Delhi this week, holding multiple rounds of talks with Indian officials on expanding defense and technology cooperation.Those extensive discussions, coming weeks after Prime Minister Narendra Modi won a third term in office, indicate how much Washington prioritizes the relationship with India, with American officials increasingly speaking of New Delhi as a counterweight to Beijing.Tenzin Lekshay, a spokesman for the Central Tibetan Administration, the government in exile, said that Tibet’s situation should not be seen through “the lens of increasing rivalry between the U.S. and China,” but as a reminder of how the Tibetan way of life “is facing an existential threat” as China assimilates the region.“We do hope that leaders of the free world will stand for the Tibet cause, particularly stressing the Chinese leadership to reinstall the dialogue to resolve the Sino-Tibet conflict,” Mr. Lekshay said. More

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      in World Politics

      Tibetan Activist and Writer Tenzin Tsundue Talks to Fair Observer

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      The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media. More

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      in World Politics

      The Solution to India’s China Problem: A Free Tibet

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      India has had a wound around its Himalayan neck ever since it suffered a humiliating defeat to China in 1962. The recent clash between Indian and China soldiers in Galwan Valley on June 15 has only rubbed salt into that wound.

      It has come to this because when China invaded neighboring Tibet in 1950, India was in thrall to the newly-established communist regime under Mao Zedong after a bloody revolution. Ignoring its civilizational relationship with Tibet, India hoped to gain from the emerging power of the People’s Republic of China and thus celebrated “Hindi-Chini bhai bhai,” a popular slogan of the time that translates to “Indians and Chinese are brothers.”

      Han and Hindu Nationalism Come Face to Face

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      After 1962, the Chinese military stood on the doorstep of India across thousands of kilometers in the Himalayas. Proverbially, this border was guarded by only 60 Indian policemen before China’s conquest of Tibet. Pertinently, India never had a border with China before 1950.

      Refuge in India

      If Tibet had remained a free and independent country, today it would have been the 10th largest nation with 2.5 million square kilometers of land. The Tibetan Plateau hosts 46,000 glaciers, nearly one-fourth of the world’s total number. It is a source of numerous rivers, including some of the most mighty ones such as the Indus, Brahmaputra, Mekong and Yangtze. It is shocking that such a vast reservoir of water and natural resources in Asia has been occupied by China and it is even more shocking that it barely gets a mention today.

      Ancient Buddhist culture has been preserved in Tibet over many centuries. In the Indian public psyche, Kailash Mansarovar was part of India. Tibetans used to visit Buddhist pilgrimage sites in India at Sarnath, Bodhgaya, Nalanda and Amravati. The India–Tibet border was irrelevant and people used to cross it freely. Today, that border has two armies facing each other and people no longer cross it.

      After the Dalai Lama took refuge in India in 1959, around 100,000 Tibetans have come to India. Most of them live in the Himalayan regions and the state of Karnataka. The Tibetan seat of power is in Dharamshala, Himachal Pradesh, where the Dalai Lama has set up abode. The Tibetan parliament and government are also based there. Although many Tibetans still dream of a free Tibet, India‘s desire for closer ties with China in the past has led New Delhi to shy away from supporting Tibetan independence. As a refugee in India, the Dalai Lama has spoken of autonomy and adhered to India‘s “One-China” policy.

      In 70 years of Chinese occupation, more than 1 million Tibetans have been killed, 6,000 monasteries destroyed and Tibet’s cultural identity attacked. The Chinese have also proceeded to exploit Tibet’s natural resources. They have cleared forests, bombed mountains and practice strip mining for gold, copper, lithium and other rare earth elements.

      Long Ignored

      The international community has ignored the genocide and exploitation Tibet has experienced over the last seven decades. Powerful nations have made their peace with China for geopolitical and economic reasons. In the process, Tibetans have suffered a lot.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Globalization has led over 160 countries trading with China. Western “liberal democrats” blindly accept the “One-China” policy and recognize Tibet as a part of China. Freed of any external pressure, China has become more oppressive in Tibet. Even possessing the Dalai Lama’s photo could land a Tibetan in jail on charges of separatism. Although Tibetan youth do not retaliate like their counterparts in Palestine or Kashmir, they have resorted to self-immolation as a form of protest against Chinese occupation.

      Tibetans still believe that freedom is possible. Until six decades ago, Confucianism and Buddhism were the strongest influences on Chinese society. Communism attacked these twin pillars. Capitalism has shaken them further. Today, the only religion consumerist China worships is money. Yet, as the Chinese are discovering, life is more than money. Tibetans are convinced that China will never be able to conquer their spirit and that they are free until their spirit is free.

      During visits of Chinese leaders, Indian police customarily arrest all Tibetan activists to appease China. Yet young Tibetans take their inspiration from India’s struggle for independence from British rule. Few remember that until 1942, most Indians did not believe they would see freedom in their lifetime. Mahatma Gandhi’s Quit India Movement struggled to gain mass support. Within five years, India became independent because the British Empire collapsed under its own weight. Tibetans believe the same will happen to the modern Chinese empire.

      Chinese Domination

      China has not only occupied Tibet but also Uighur East Turkestan, a Muslim-majority region covering 1.8 million square kilometers now known as Xinjiang. It also occupies 1.2 million square kilometers of southern Mongolia and 84,000 square kilometers of Manchuria. By some calculations, 60% of China’s 9.6 million square kilometers is occupied territory. China’s expansionist designs continue. The “Belt and Road Initiative” is China’s plan to dominate world trade.

      The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) controls all aspects of life in the country. The administration, the judiciary, the legislature, the media and the military are all controlled by the CCP. The party fosters a personality cult around Mao despite his responsibility for the death of millions of people. His portrait still adorns Tiananmen Square, a place made immemorable by the brutal slaughter of unarmed students by armed tanks. That 1989 massacre still stands obliterated from history textbooks and even the internet in China.

      Territorial encroachments and China’s support for Pakistan demonstrate that Beijing has no respect for India’s territorial integrity. There is no reason for India to respect China’s territorial integrity. Beijing is facing international isolation because of the COVID-19 outbreak. From Japan to Bhutan, China’s neighbors are nervous about its expansionism. The time has come for India to stand up to China. It must scrap the “One-China” policy and support Tibet’s nonviolent movement for independence.

      *[An earlier version of this article was published by The Indian Express.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More