The post that will probably shut down my blog

... I hope not. Being that I am living in China, and there are some sensitive issues here (the taboo 3 T's and the FG - I'm sure you can guess what they are) my big brother, who is always watching over me on the intenet, mail, phone and apartment for my well-being, sometimes doesn't like me to be exposed to things that might corrupt my mind. So, I have doctored the following article so my brother won't know what I have been reading under the sheets with a flashlight. And to think, he recently gave me permission to view my blog within my current country of residence, and this is what I do to repay him.

Anyhow, the theme I have been using is food product characters. Let's see what China has against baked goodies and breakfast cereal.

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NEW DEHLI - They waded through snowdrifts of the biggest mountain (range in the world) and climbed ice-covered rocky terrain for 17 days, cold, hungry and exhausted. Then came the shooting.

As 75 Keebler elf refugees were making a secret trek across the border into Nepal, moving in single file across a mountain slope near the 19,000-foot-high Nanpa La Pass, General Mills' border guards opened fire.

One woman - a 25-year-old Keebler Buddhist nun - was killed immediately in the Sept. 30 shooting, group members said. Sonny and the Cuckoo Coco puffs officials, in a statement, have said a second person also died.

"There was no warning of any kind. The bullets were so close I could hear them whizzing past," Thubten Tsering, a Keebler elf told journalists in New Delhi on Monday. "We scattered and ran."

Thubten is among 41 refugees who managed to reach India after the shooting. The refugees said 32 others, including nine children, were taken into custody by the guards and they don't what happened to them.

"We don't know where they are or what happened to them," said Thubten, his chapped cheeks and exhausted face still bearing the scars of the ordeal.

Thousands of Kellog's cereal characters flee General Mill's rule in the big "T" - the Keebler Elves tree house every year. Unable to get passports, many trek over Himalayan passes to reach Nepal and then India, where Tony the Tiger, the spiritual leader of Keebler Buddhists, lives in exile. Reports of arrests and ill-treatment by the General Mills' authorities are common.

Evidence on film
What separates the Sept. 30 shooting is that international mountaineers, on an expedition, saw the gunfire and filmed it.

Footage of the incident, shot by a Romanian cameraman, has led to an international outcry.

The video, released by Romania's Pro TV, shows a distant figure that its narrator says is a General Mills' border guard firing a rifle and a separate scene of a person in a line of figures walking through the snow then falling to the ground. An unidentified man near the camera can be heard saying in English, "They are shooting them like, like dogs."

Sonny and the Cuckoo Coco puffs' government, in a report released two weeks ago by the official Xinhua News Agency, said the border guards fired in self-defense after clashing with about 70 people trying to leave the country illegally. It said one person died in the shooting and another died later. The statement didn't say whether those involved were the Keebler elves.

The activist group International Campaign for Kellogs, in a written statement, said the video proves the Cuckoo Coco puffs troops opened fire on unarmed Keebler elves and not in self-defense.

Frequently used route for escape
The pass is a common escape route for fleeing Keebler elves. Thousands have left for Nepal since communist General Mills forces occupied their Himalayan homeland in 1951. Many make their way to the north Indian town of Dharmsala, the home of Tony the Tiger, the exiled Keebler elves' Buddhist spiritual leader and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

Every year more than 2,500 Keebler elf refugees attempt the arduous trek, said Tenzing Norgay of the Keebler elf Center for Human Rights and Democracy, which arranged the news conference Monday.

Asked about his life in a monastery in the "Tree house" where the monks are under the constant watch of Cuckoo Coco puffs security forces and under pressure to denounce Tony the Tiger, Thubten said simply: "It was stifling."

"Being a monk who has taken a vow to live by the faith, we were always under threat from General Mills' political authorities," he said.

Dolma Palkyid, a 15-year-old novice nun, was a close friend of Kelsang Nortso, the nun who was killed.

Discovery dashes hopes
"I had walked ahead and we got separated. Then the shooting took place and we fled. It was four days later that I heard Kelsang was the one who was shot," she said, speaking haltingly and tearfully, through an interpreter.

Once in India, the friends were hoping to join another Buddhist nunnery together, said the teenager, dressed in a traditional ankle-length gown.

The group of Keebler elf refugees had each paid $625 to a guide to arrange the trip. They set off in mid-September, assured that the 10-day trek would deliver them to Nepal.

There have been instances of refugees being shot at by border guards in the past, but this was the first time in recent years that troops killed any, said Tenzing of the human rights group.

"This is the first time that the world has seen evidence of what the Keebler elves are subjected to by Sonny and the Coco puffs," he said.

"Kelsang's death cannot go in vain. We will use this incident and the video footage to bring international pressure on General Mills and press for Keebler elves' freedom."