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INDIA-CHINA-CONFLICT NEWSERIES
Indian and Chinese troops in deadly border clash
NEW DELHI, June 16, 2020 (BSS/AFP) – Three Indian soldiers were
killed in a violent face-off on the Chinese border, the Indian army
said Tuesday, following weeks of rising tensions and the deployment of
thousands of extra troops from both sides.
Brawls erupt regularly between the two nuclear-armed giants across
their disputed 3,500-kilometre (2,200-mile) frontier, but no one has
been killed in decades.
But the Indian army said there were “casualties on both sides” in
Monday’s incident on the Himalayan frontier between China’s Tibet and
India’s region Ladakh, although Beijing made no mention of any —
while laying the blame squarely on Delhi.
“A violent face-off took place yesterday (Monday) night with
casualties on both sides. The loss of lives on the Indian side
includes an officer and two soldiers,” an Indian army spokesman said
in a statement.
An Indian army officer in the region told AFP that there had been
no shooting in the incident, on precipitous, rocky terrain in the
strategically important Galwan Valley.
“It was violent hand-to-hand scuffles,” the officer said on
condition of anonymity. The officer killed was a colonel from
– ‘Attacking Chinese personnel’ –
Beijing confirmed a clash took place and accused Indian soldiers of
crossing into Chinese territory and “attacking Chinese personnel”.
Indian troops “crossed the border line twice… provoking and
attacking Chinese personnel, resulting in serious physical
confrontation between border forces on the two sides,” China’s foreign
ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said Tuesday.
“We again solemnly request that India follows the relevant attitude
and restrains its frontline troops,” he added.
China’s defence ministry confirmed the incident had resulted in
casualties but did not give the nationality of the victims or any
other details.
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INDIA-CHINA-CONFLICT NEWSERIES-TWO LAST
India and China have long squabbled about their border but recent
weeks have seen an escalation.
On May 9, several Indian and Chinese soldiers were injured in a
clash involving fists and stone-throwing at Naku La in India’s Sikkim
state, which borders Bhutan, Nepal and China.
Alice Wells, the top US State Department official for South Asia,
likely irked Beijing last month when she said that China was seeking
to upset the regional balance and had to be “resisted”.
But the Chinese foreign ministry said only last week that a
“positive consensus” had been reached following “effective
communication” through diplomatic and military channels.
India’s foreign ministry too had sounded conciliatory, saying the
two sides would “continue the military and diplomatic engagements to
resolve the situation and to ensure peace and tranquillity in the
border areas.”
However, Indian sources and news reports suggested that Chinese
troops remained in parts of the Galwan Valley and of the northern
shore of the Pangong Tso lake that it occupied in recent weeks.
“We are at an extremely worrisome juncture in the relationship,”
former Indian ambassador to China and foreign secretary Nirupama Menon
Rao told AFP.
– Prickly relations –
India and China have never even agreed on the length of their “Line
of Actual Control” frontier, and each side uses different frontier
proposals made by Britain to China in the 19th century to back their
claims.
They fought a brief war in 1962 in which China took territory from
India. Further deadly clashes followed in 1967, but the last shot
fired in anger was in 1975.
In 2017 there was a 72-day showdown after Chinese forces moved into
the disputed Doklam plateau on the China-India-Bhutan border.
After that India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese leader
Xi Jinping appeared to ease tensions at two summits.
“If not handled correctly this can really escalate into something
much bigger than we had initially imagined,” Harsh V Pant from the
Observer Research Foundation think-tank told AFP, calling China’s
statement “worrying”.
“China, with its better infrastructure, with its better military
capabilities, perhaps thinks that this is the time to push India, to
see how far India will go,” Pant told AFP.
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