NEW YORK, Oct. 23, 1995 (N.Y. Times) - The Tibetans chanted, "Shame on China!" The Cubans shouted, "Cuba, si! Castro, no!" The Kurds joined in with "Stop the Turkish fascism!" and the Pakistanis with "Go back, Bhutto!" The Belarus contingent yelled "Who is enemy of freedom? Lukashenko!" and a mass of Tamils prodded the Sri Lankan leader bluntly, "Out! Chandrika, out!"

But in all the cacophonous plaints voiced by several thousand protesters opposite the United Nations on Sunday, there was one hoarse phrase that could be heard from groups as varied as Zairians and Taiwanese: "We want justice!"

That cry, in various forms, has floated up from a kind of international Speakers' Corner at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza for much of the 50 years that the United Nations has existed. As world leaders have practiced their oratory from grand podiums, their dissenters and victims, from across First Avenue, have clamored for their ears in a sort of extended political street theater.

The cast of protesters on Dag Hammarskjold Plaza and in nearby Ralph Bunche Park has changed; there is barely an echo left of the cold war conflicts that brought Soviet emigres to the streets or the Mideast turmoil that provoked Arabs and Jews to take up placards. But the plaza still stands as a forum of last resort for the people who see themselves as members of captive nations, for groups out of political favor in their homelands and for those who come from places where dissent can bring death.

"We get to speak for those Cubans who cannot speak," said Remberto Perez, regional director of the Cuban American National Foundation, whose members had brought a quilt sewn of more than 9,000 squares commemorating people who had died under the rule of President Fidel Castro, many with the label "fusilado" - shot.

Nearby, under a blue tent and surrounded by hundreds of chanting compatriots, Tenzing Jamyang and five other Tibetans languished through the ninth day of a hunger strike they have sworn will be to the death - unless the United Nations agrees to declare Tibet an occupied country illegally colonized by China. A 24-year-old video librarian who lives in Chicago, Tenzing Jamyang said he despaired of finding any other way to get world attention.

"It is my birth duty to redeem Tibet," he said. "Since the last 26 years we have been protesting all over the world, but we never get any response from any country or the United Nations."

A similar desperation came from supporters of the separatist Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka, more than 1,000 of them waving flags depicting a tiger on a field of red and demanding that the United Nations recognize their right to self-determination.

Like many of their counterparts across First Avenue, they felt deprived of the attention they saw as their due, and baffled about how to get it. By demonstrating they felt as if they were bringing their case to global viewers.

"We find our struggle has not been recognized by the international media, and other struggles have come to the front, like Bosnia," said Dr. V. Alaganar, a Tamil organizers. "But we deserve equal attention."

Their protest against Sri Lanka's president, Chandrika Kumaratunga, included accusations that her government continued to bomb Tamil places of worship and schools; along with leaflets, they passed out free videocassettes of the recent bombing of one site.

If the Tamils had few hopes of getting their problems to the forefront of the world agenda, the protesters representing the Mohajir of Pakistan had even fewer, aware that few Americans had ever heard of them and would care little for their problems if they had.

Mohajir protesters, representing a subgroup of 22 million people who migrated to Pakistan after the partition of India in 1947, charged that Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's government had ordered "dishonor, gang rapes and victimization" of Mohajir women.

Protesters did not fool themselves that the role of the United Nations guaranteed its interest in their problems. Like savvy advertisers, they resorted to attention-grabbers to make their problems more relevant.

A group of Belarus emigres knew that Aleksandr Lukashenko, the Russian-leaning leader of their small former Soviet republic, might hold little natural interest here. So they played the American angle to perfection, harking back to the recent scandal when American balloons flying over Belarus were shot down.

"Who shot American balloonists?" they chanted repeatedly. "Lukashenko!"