Published by: World Tibet Network News, Sunday, May 26 1996

By Tanya Pang

OSLO, May 22 (Reuter) - Voice of Tibet (VOT), a new international radio station, went on the air on Wednesday broadcasting directly to the Chinese-ruled region and to exiled Tibetans in Asia.

VOT chairman Svein Wilhelmsen, speaking at the launch, said Tibetans at home and exiled in India and Nepal would be able to tune in to a 15-minute daily broadcast of reports and features on politics, religion, human rights and cultural issues.

"The aim is to give a voice to the voiceless," Wilhelmsen told reporters. "There are few alternative information channels for the Tibetans."

He said the daily programme in three dialects would be broadcast between 0945 GMT and 1000 GMT each evening from a network of producers in Norway, Italy, Britain and the United States. It has a budget of two million Norwegian crowns ($302,800) for the next two years.

The Chinese army marched into Tibet in 1950 and took control of the Himalayan region. In 1959, its spiritual and temporal leader, the Dalai Lama, fled to India after an abortive uprising against Chinese rule.

Wilhelmsen said the station would not be used as a political mouthpiece for the exiled leader or his government.

"The purpose is to give the Tibetan people, both in Tibet and in exile, objective information which is important to them on cultural, political and human rights issues. We believe that radio communication through an international network is the most efficient way of doing this," Wilhelmsen said.

Rough estimates indicate that between 60 and 80 percent of the six million Tibetans in Tibet, India and Nepal have access to a radio, he said.

Fears that Chinese authorities might try to jam the programme had not been realised in trial sessions, and the country's natural terrain would also make it difficult to block the signal effectively, VOT organisers said.

VOT was initiated by Worldview International, the Norwegian Tibet Committee and the Norwegian Human Rights House. Worldview is an international organisation using radio and television to further the cause of human rights and free expression.