World Tibet Network News Wednesday, April 22, 1998

NEW DELHI, April 22 (AFP) - The Norwegian government has extended its support to six Tibetans on a 43-day fast to death to demand an end to Chinese rule in their Himalayan homeland, the protesters said here on Wednesday.

The Tibean Youth Congress (TYC), which claims thousands of Tibetans as its members, said Oslo has assured the six hunger strikers that "it would continue to raise the situation of Tibetans in multilateral fora."

The Tibetans in a statement, said a Norwegian representative on April 15 voiced Oslo's concern in the United Nations Human Rights Commission over the continued Chinese rule in the Himalayan state.

TYC President Tsten Norbu said: "We are very grateful to the government and people of Norway for their abiding help and sympathy for the people of Tibet."

No Norwegian official was available for comment Wednesday in New Delhi.

The six Tibetan activists, aged between 25 and 70 who began a hunger strike here on March 10, have drawn wide support from groups and personalities across the world.

They 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 activists want the UN to take decisive steps in a bid to resolve the Tibetan issue.

On Monday, a group of nuns demonstrated outside the UN office in Delhi, to seek compassion for the "pitiable Chinese, whose actions are harming themselves and the others."

The hunger strikers also 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 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 more than 100,000 Tibetan refugees.