World Tibet Network News Monday, April 13, 1998

NEW DELHI, India (AP) -- The head of the International Commission of Jurists, whose report on Tibet spurred six activists to go on a hunger strike, pleaded with them Monday to end their protest.

The hunger strikers, all Tibetans living in exile in India, range from 28 to 70. They have refused food since March 10, consuming only water flavored with lemon juice each day.

They say they are prepared to die unless the United Nations implements recommendations made by the jurists for resolving the dispute between China, which considers Tibet one of its provinces, and Tibetans who want self-rule.

The ICJ proposed in a report last year that a U.N.-supervised referendum be held in Tibet to determine whether Tibetans want independence, autonomy within China, or some other status. It also recommended that the U.N. appoint a Tibet human rights investigator.

"I don't think there is a right to die ... although their strike is for a very noble cause," Adama Dieng, secretary general of the ICJ, told reporters as 50 demonstrators shouted slogans in support of the hunger strikers across the street.

Dieng said Monday that his group, a Geneva-based, independent organization of law professionals, was reiterating those recommendations in a letter to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan in the next few days.

The Dalai Lama, political and spiritual leader to exiled Tibetans, has also told the hunger strikers suicide by fasting was an act of violence that contradicted his commitment to peaceful protest, but he refrained from asking them to end their fast.

Tseten Norbu, whose Tibetan Youth Congress organized the strike, said the protesters were determined to continue until they had written assurance from Annan that the jurists' recommendations would be considered.