(TibetanReview.net, Jan15’25) –While the full scale of the fatality and injury as well as destruction and damage caused by the devastating earthquake which hit Tibet’s Mt Everest county of Dingri on Jan 7 remains unknown due to denial of access and censorship, China said Jan 14 that eight religious places were damaged in the most severely hit township of Dramtso and three villages under it.
This information was presented by China’s online Tibet news service eng.tibet.cn Jan 14 as a propaganda exercise to claim how the party’s United Front Work Department and the Chinese government-appointed Monastery Management Committee personnel rescued monks and nuns from the rubbles at two of the severely affected religious places to earn their gratitude to the party and government of China.
It is not clear how many monks and nuns were injured to what degrees. One monk has said he felt sure that he would die when he fell under the rubble, but was saved by search and rescue personnel from these two bodies.
The report said the earthquake severely damaged the Dzongphub Nunnery in Gaden Village and the Zingkar Choede Monastery in Zingkar Village, both in Dramtso Township.
The monks at Zingkar Monastery were at prayers when the earthquake struck. The report said personnel from the two bodies, joined by monastery-resident officers and police personnel, and the local Tibetan public provided emergency help to rescue the monks.
The monk has said he felt sure that the whole monastery was going to collapse. According to him, the mountainside-built Dzongphub Nunnery, Located 4,400 metres above sea level, has more than a 600-year history behind it.
After the monks rushed out, gathered at a safe location and were all accounted for, everyone, seeing the Zingkar Nunnery, which is located over the distance, in an abnormal condition, rushed to it, reaching there at 10:40 am, which was more than one-and-half hours after the earthquake first struck.
Because the road was severely damaged by the earthquake and therefore unfit for vehicular travel, it took the search and rescue personnel more than an hour to reach there, travelling on foot. Several nuns buried under the rubble were rescued, the monk was cited as saying.
He has continued that the monks with less severe injuries were treated at the Dingri county hospital while the seriously injured were taken to the Shigatse City People’s Hospital. No numbers have been mentioned.
The report said four truckloads of supplies were rushed to all the eight religious places in the worst affected Dramtso Township and three villages under it. It did not say anything about casualties, if any, and the destruction or damage at the other six religious places.
The report said the 12 personnel from the local United Front Work Department office, the 34 monastery-resident officers, the 12 monastery-resident police personnel, and the 173 monks of Zingkar Choede Monastery carried out the search and rescue operation in the local area.
The report cited the Monastery Management Committee member Thubten, who belongs to the county’s Gurung Village, as saying that after search and rescue work was carried out, the monks visited the homes of people who had died to perform the last rites. Monk Thubten has said four of his close relatives had died from the earthquake, sparing only the family’s elderly couple.
The report said the Dzongphub Nunnery is a district level protected cultural heritage site while Zingkar Choede Monastery is a regional-level protected site.
The report did not say what sections of the monastery and nunnery were destroyed and which one’s suffered damages but survived.
There has been no change in China’s official record of 126 deaths from the earthquake, although unofficial sources have been cited as saying at least 100 had died in Dramtso alone, one of the three worst hit counties.
As a matter of fact, there is still no county and village-wise count of casualties, serious injuries, destruction, and other details as a result of the earthquake, nor even of the number of people missing.
Meanwhile, a total of 3,614 aftershocks had been detected as of 8 am, Jan 14, including a 5.0-magnitude earthquake on Jan 13 morning, with no casualties, reported China’s official Xinhua news agency.
China’s latest media reports say that as of Jan 13 noon, a total of 126 people had died, 407 were rescued, 61,500 people were affected, over 47,500 individuals relocated, and more than 6,700 damaged houses checked.
Independent verification of these details and finding out other information remains difficult due to ban on access and control on information. Chinese authorities in Tibet have forbidden aid workers and Buddhist monks from entering areas of the region struck by the deadly earthquakes, reported the Tibetan service of rfa.org Jan 13.