World Tibet Network News Monday, April 20, 1998

NEW DELHI, April 20 (AFP) - Fifty Tibetan nuns staged a public prayer session here Monday for six activists staging a hunger strike for about six weeks to demand Tibet's independence from China.

Witnesses said the nuns demonstrated outside the United Nations office in central New Delhi, praying for world peace and seeking compassion for the "pitiable Chinese, whose actions are harming themselves and the others."

Six activists, aged between 25 and 70 who began a hunger strike here on March 10, want the United Nations to take decisive steps in a bid to resolve the Tibetan issue.

The nuns also presented a memorandum to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan saying: "Your karmic consequences have placed you in a unique position to help the Tibetans in their endeavour to defend themselves from the genocidal policy of the Chinese leaders.

"You must use this position to bring happiness and peace to Tibetans and sentient beings in general."

The hunger strikers want the UN secretary general to appoint a special envoy on Tibet in order to settle the question of Tibet peacefully under a UN-supervised plebiscite.

The hunger strikers have been visited by the Dalai Lama, Hollywood actor Richard Gere, human rights activist and former model Bianca Jagger as well as Kerry Kennedy Cuomo, a niece of former US president John F. Kennedy.

The Dalai Lama, spiritual leader of many Tibetans, has lived in the northern Indian town of Dharamsala since fleeing his homeland in 1959 following a failed anti-China uprising.

India is home to about 100,000 Tibetan emigres.