< FREEDOM FOR TIBET/DEMOCRACY IN CHINA-FAX ! - #68 >

Newsletter on the campaigns of the Radical Party for the freedom of Tibet and the democracy on China.

Issue #68, April 29, 1998

>>> Editors office: Massimo Lensi, Via Cavour 68 - 50129 Firenze (Italy) Tel.+39-55-230.22.66 - Fax +39-55-230.24.52 Mailto: tibet.fax@agora.it Url - http://www.radicalparty.org

Telnet: Agora.stm.it

>>> Distribution; Alberto Novi

Mailto:A.Novi@agora.stm.it

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"I truly believe that individuals can make a difference in society.

Since periods of great change such as the present one come so rarely

in human history, it is up to each of us to make the best use of our

time to help create a happier world". Tenzin GYATSO,the Fourteenth

Dalai Lama, 1992

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>>>Published in english, spanish, french and italian.

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NEW DELHI:

HUNGER STRIKE OF 6 MEMBERS OF THE TIBETAN YOUTH CONGRESS.

It is with deep commotion that we learn about the tragic loss of Thubten Ngodup, a Tibetan Monk of Tashilumpo, hometown of the Panchen Lama, who fled to India in 1987. On April 27, Thubten Ngodup has burned himself while Indian special troops were using the force to take away the 6 unto death hunger-strikers, at their 46th day of struggle, while India was hosting the Chinese high officials.

The emotion with which the terrible piece of news has been received shouldn't make us forget the deep meaning of nonviolent struggle and the big opportunity at hand to launch a worldly movement for freedom of Tibet, reviving the idea of a nonviolent Satyagraha conceived and organized to reach concrete objectives.

The news we have from New Delhi is alarming. Some other 100 Tibetans are ready to re-start the TYC initiative.

For these reasons, and not only, the Radical Party has sent an open letter to the Tibetan Government in Exile. We believe that the word "hope", that seems to have been forgotten by the New Delhi people, should reacquire its meaning through the definition and organization of a precise political action.

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OPEN LETTER TO THE TIBETAN GOVERNMENT IN EXILE

Brussels-Rome, April 29, 1998

Dear Mr. Prime Minister and Members of the Cabinet,

The initiative of the hunger-strike undertaken some weeks ago in New delhi by six Tibetans, is provoking a growing emotion all over the world. This initiative has the unquestionable merit of recalling to the conscience of public opinion the tragedy of your people, their inexpressible sufferings during those last forty years, the inability of the international community to affirm the value of Law and of dialogue, the hypocrisy of the ruling classes as prolix in words as miserly in actions.

Unfortunately, the initiative of the Tibetan activists, as understandable as it is urgent and necessary, risks failing if one does not proceed immediately to convert the objectives of this action into really attainable and concrete goals. Their hope, as well as that which their action triggered in millions of people, risks, tragically, to end in despair.

We need to take action at once, to bring this initiative back towards a "new possible", reasonably and concretely achievable today. The objective of 1.300 parliamentarians from all the world asking the UN General secretary, Mr Kofi Annan, to receive H.H. the Dalai Lama is something possible. It could become - together with that of the appointment of a UN special rapporteur for Tibet and the introduction of Tibet on the agenda of the next General assembly, for example - the first stage of the worldwide Satyagraha for the freedom of Tibet and for democracy in China.

But, in these dramatic times, the priority is put elsewhere. Responsibility lies in the hands of the Tibetan Government in exile. It is up to it, primarily, to reanimate and pick up this flame, this hope, taking a stand and indicating a "strategy of the possible", defining the objectives of a worldwide nonviolent movement of citizens, parliamentarians, representatives of governments and culture: in a word, the worldwide Satyagraha for freedom and democracy today as wished by so many people of good will and as we have been proposing to H.H. the Dalai-Lama since several years.

Now, only an official intervention of the Tibetan Government, through an explicit conversion of the objectives addressed, in the first place, to the activists on hunger-strike, offering a numerical and qualitative extension of the struggle, can bring back the nonviolent fight for the freedom of the tibetan people under the "sign of the possible" and achievable, under the sign of hope.

Radical Party