World Tibet Network News Wednesday, March 11, 1998

BERN, March 10 (AFP) - Hundreds of Tibetans on Tuesday held a demonstration in front of the Chinese embassy in Bern to mark the 39th anniversary of the abortive uprising against China's domination of the Himalayan region.

Some 400 protestors denounced human rights violations in Tibet, the Chinese policy of limiting the number of births and damage to the environment blamed on Beijing.

They registered their criticism in a document handed to the Chinese embassy.

In addition, they read a message from the Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama which was written at the time of the Lhasa uprising on March 10, 1959.

In the message, the now exiled Dalai Lama called on Tibetans to continue their non-violent struggle against what he described as "cultural genocide," while acknowledging that China had carried out some reforms.

According to the demonstrators on Tuesday, there are some seven million Chinese compared with six million ethnic Tibetans in the autonomous region of Tibet, southwest China.

Some 2,000 Tibetans live in Switzerland.