Video Shows Villagers Confronting China's Soldiers at Disputed Border

Indian goatherds confronted Chinese soldiers at their countries' disputed boundary last month after their livestock was prevented from grazing in the sparsely populated highlands.

An Instagram video posted last week by a villager from Ladakh, a border region in India's northeast on the western end of the 2,100-mile Line of Actual Control, captured the moment the locals found themselves in the middle of New Delhi's decades-long territorial dispute with Beijing.

China and India fought a bloody border war in 1962 and have been locked in a high-intensity standoff across the LAC for four years, especially in eastern Ladakh, where a significant escalation in 2020 led to the deadly Galwan Valley clash, which claimed the lives of 20 Indian Army troops and at least four Chinese soldiers.

The latest incident came to light on Tuesday after Konchok Stanzin, a village councilor in Chushul about 30 miles away, shared the footage on his social media account on X, formerly Twitter.

India governs Ladakh as a special administrative region, also known as a "union territory." China claims part of the territory falls within its Tibet Autonomous Region.

Chinese People's Liberation Army soldiers at the fluid border now regularly patrol lands once considered traditional grazing grounds by the local Ladakhi community, including the pastoral land known as Kakjung, where the January 2 confrontation took place.

The Chinese military's permanent presence in the area is sizable. Roughly 30 miles south of Kakjung is a PLA encampment at Demchok, and another PLA base at Rutog is 37 miles to the east. China considers the two border villages to be part of Xinjiang and Tibet.

"Why have you come here? Why have you brought your vehicles here? This is our ancestral land. We graze our livestock here," one herdsman was heard asking in Tibetan, which is also spoken by the local Ladakhis.

The villagers pelted the Chinese soldiers with stones as the disagreement flared up, according to the images.

In the video, some of the PLA soldiers who blocked and filmed the goatherds also spoke in Tibetan, Newsweek confirmed. They were likely ethnic Tibetans who were recruited by the Chinese army for their local knowledge about the border areas. One wore a jacket that carried the words "U.S. Air Force."

China's embassy in New Delhi did not immediately respond to a written request for comment.

Ishey Spalzang, a councilor for the Nyoma village that governs Kakjung, told the Indian newspaper The Hindu that the contested area was within India's claimed LAC, a delineation that has been a point of contention with China.

"It is a valley and is essential for winter grazing of cattle. Earlier in 2019, the Chinese had tried to stop the graziers, but we had pitched tents to assert our claim," Spalzang told the paper.

In a post on X, he wrote: "See how our local people are showing their bravery in front of the PLA, claiming that the area they are stopping is our nomad's grazing land. PLA stopping our nomads from grazing in our territory."

The rare act of defiance underscored a deep-rooted connection to the local land, which faces increasing challenges from the Chinese government's claims.

Local officials as well as members of the Indian Army and the border police visited the grazing site about 10 days after the incident, The Hindu said on Tuesday. The Indian government did not disclose the standoff and has yet to comment publicly on the matter.