World Tibet Network News Sunday, April 26, 1998

NEW DELHI, April 26 (AFP) - Indian authorities early Sunday forced three of a group of six Tibetans on a hunger strike here for more than a month to go to hospital, witnesses said.

The three hunger strikers, who had been refusing food since March 10 to demand their country's freedom from China, were removed from a New Delhi pavement by police and taken to a nearby hospital, the witnesses said.

Police warned on Saturday that the hunger strikers risked arrest if they refused to go in for treatment, Tibetan officials said.

Tseten Norbu, president of the Tibetan Youth Congress, said the police warning was delivered after doctors said the protestors' condition was deteriorating.

"The doctors said hospitalisation was highly recommended as the strikers were becoming weak," Norbu told AFP.

Norbu said authorities were also "scared" the high-profile hunger strike would mar the first-ever visit to India by a chief of the Chinese army, General Fu Quanyou, on Sunday.

The hunger strike, being held on a pavement in the heart of New Delhi, has been organised by the Tibetan Youth Congress, which counts around 10,000 members.

The hungerstrikers, one woman and five men aged between 25 and 70, are demanding their country's freedom from China and have called on the United Nations to send a special human rights investigator to Tibet.

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

More than 100,000 Tibetan refugees also live in India.