World Tibet Network News Monday, April 27, 1998

NEW DELHI, April 27 (AFP) - Police on Monday forced the end of a marathon hunger strike by Tibetans, removing the three remaining protesters to a hospital from a New Delhi pavement, the police and witnesses said.

Three other Tibetan hunger strikers had already been forced to abandon the almost 50-day protest on Sunday.

The police said the strike was stopped at around 6:00 am (0030 GMT).

A supporter of the hunger strikers set himself on fire at the venue of the protest as the police put the three remaining Tibetans into a van, said Tseten Norbu, president of the Tibetan Youth Congress (TYC).

Norbu identifed the man as Thupten Ngodub, an ex-soldier of a Tibetan arm of the Indian army raised after China and India fought a bitter border war in 1962.

"Ngodub was simply frustrated at the way the police manhandled the hunger strikers and smashed our tent," the TYC chief told AFP at the protest site in a moghul-built observatory in central New Delhi.

"He just set himself on fire and began running," Norbu said, adding that police doused the flames after overpowering Ngodub. "It was a horrible sight."

The police said Ngodub, hospitalised with burn injuries, was likely to be arrested for attempting to commit suicide.

Suicide is illegal in India and the police can also arrest hunger strikers.

The police action coincided with the beginning of the first-ever visit to India by a chief of the Chinese army, General Fu Quanyou, who arrived in New Delhi on Sunday.

TYC president Norbu said the Indian police broke up the hunger strike to "appease" the Chinese government.

"The Indian government did not want us to be on protest while general Fu remained in India," Norbu said. "But we will not give up. Our struggle will continue."

The six protesters went on their marathon hunger strike on March 10 to demand Tibet's freedom from China. They also called on the United Nations to send a special human rights investigator to Tibet.

Contingents of riot police and paramilitary troops cordoned off the strike site as a group of Tibetans squatted on the ground, some of them sobbing and weeping.

"They did not even spare us and beat us up while removing the hunger strikers to hospital," said T.C. Thinley, a Tibetan monk.

The police on Monday also tightened security around the Chinese embassy here to prevent Tibetan protests near the diplomatic complex, official sources said.

The Dalai Lama and a number of foreign personalities, including US actor Richard Gere, visited the six hunger strikers during their protest.

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.

Chinese troops marched into Tibet in 1951. More than 100,000 Tibetan refugees also live in India.