"It is very difficult to confirm any of the news that is coming from Tibet": Tibetan leader on earthquake

Tsering said that it is difficult to confirm the reports as only Chinese media agencies are reporting on the devastating quake.

"There have not been many updates as of 7 o'clock yesterday evening China time, 126 people have died as a result of this earthquake and 188 have been injured. More than 30,000 people have been displaced. We still do not know because the only source is the Chinese agencies. International media is not allowed to cover the disaster so it is very difficult to confirm any of the news that is coming from Tibet," he told ANI.

He further told ANI that they had organised a special prayer for the people who were affected because of the earthquake. They are not able to contact those who are in Tibet.

"We are organising this special prayer only because of the disaster that happened in Tibet yesterday January 7. We do have some contact with the Tibetans inside Tibet because the earthquake happened quite close to Nepal and many of the relatives also live in Nepal. So there has been some communications and there are also some social media posts. We can also see that the local Tibetans from all provinces of Tibet are also coming together to supply necessary items for the Tibetans living there," he said.

Tsering said that although China says that they have taken measures for poverty alleviation, most of the houses collapsed in the quake, and it shows that the houses were quite old.

"Presumably, the Chinese government is also putting in their efforts but we have to see how much...we can also see that much of the destruction and loss of lives have happened because of the destruction of housing. So China claims that they have done a lot of poverty alleviation and built a lot of housing for the Tibetans but we can see that it's not enough. Most of the housing that collapsed during the earthquake was built many decades ago were not newly built," he said.

Tsering said that the earthquake is a warning sign to not mess with nature and to be mindful of the environmental consequences of any action people take.

"We have also specified that this is a warning signal by nature to the Chinese government that they should be very mindful of environmental impact assessment when they do mega projects in Tibet. Particularly the one that the Chinese government announced last month, building a mega dam on Yarlung Tsangpo (Brahmaputra river) river at this place called Pema Quo where the river takes a U-turn to come into India," he said.

"This mega-dam is supposed to produce the three times hydroelectricity that the biggest dam, that is also in China, of the world is producing," he added.

Through the sheer size of the dam that China is planning to build, one must keep in mind the effect it will have on the environment, Tshering said.

"You can imagine that this whole Tibetan plateau came out of the tectonic shift in the Indian plate and the Eurasian plate and the whole region is a seismic zone. So if anything happens to this size of the dam which China is planning to build, it could be very catastrophic for the downstream states." (ANI)