NEW DELHI, March 12 (AFP) - Around 500 Tibetans burnt Chinese flags here Wednesday on the anniversary of a failed 1959 women's uprising against Chinese rule.

Witnesses said the demonstrators shouted slogans and set fire to 38 flags, one to represent each year since the uprising, while accusing the Chinese authorities of rights abuses in Tibet.

"We reiterate and rededicate ourselves to struggle until we achieve our goal," the Tibetan Women's Association, based in New Delhi, said.

The marchers, some weeping, also accused Beijing of carrying out cultural and political genocide and said even its market reforms had failed to win over Tibetans living in "illegal and forceful occupation."

They carried a memorandum addressed to Chinese President Jiang Zemin urging him to "realise the wisdom of resolving the question of Tibet through negotiations.

"The recent Xinjiang unrest and continued Tibetan people's movement inside and outside Tibet reflects the true feeling of Tibetan people's discontent against your highly acclaimed liberalisation policies."

The Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader, fled to India in 1959 after Beijing crushed the uprising. On Monday, 1,000 Tibetans took to the streets here to remember the event.

China last week unveiled legal amendments to its counter-revolution offences and introduced harsh laws to crush anti-Chinese campaigns in Tibet and the northwestern province of Xinjiang.

The modernisation of the 1979 criminal law came after a spate of ethnic unrest in Xinjiang which led to the deaths of 19 people in rioting and bomb attacks.

In Tibet, simmering anti-Chinese sentiment led to a bomb attack in central Lhasa on December 25 and a series of other unconfirmed bomb attacks.

The Dalai Lama, made a separate appeal to China Monday. "In some ways our century could be called the century of war and bloodshed. The challenge before us is to make the next century a century of dialogue and non-violent conflict resolution," he said.

The women activists also asked Beijing to release all political detainees, guarantee freedom of worship, and "stop population transfer from China to Tibet."