World Tibet Network News Wednesday, April 29, 1998

NEW DELHI, April 29 (AFP) - Tibetans prepared for a grand funeral after a compatriot died here Wednesday after setting himself on fire to protest against police breaking up an anti-China hunger strike.

Tibetans draped cars and trucks with their national flag to carry the body of Thupten Ngodub, 50, who died of cardiac arrest in a Delhi hospital just after midnight.

Ngodub set himself on fire after police ended an almost 50-day hunger strike by six Tibetans protesting against Chinese rule in Tibet.

Six others started a new hunger strike Tuesday at the site of the previous protest in an old observatory.

Police and paramilitary troopers with teargas cannons and rifles ringed the Tibetans gathered at the hospital where doctors embalmed the body of Ngodub, who suffered 100 percent burns during the Monday morning police crackdown.

The Tibetan Youth Congress said Ngodub would be accorded a religious funeral. "People and sympathisers from all over India will attend," a spokesman said.

"Thousands are waiting at Majnu-ka-Tilla for the rites," TYC President Tseten Norbu said of a Tibetan conclave here.

He said Ngodub's body would then be taken to Dharamsala, the base of the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, for the funeral.

TYC, which has 10,000 members, said Ngodub's self-immolation would not be in vain.

"The Tibetan people have sent a clear message to the world that they can sacrifice themselves for the cause of an independent Tibet ... More blood will flow in the coming days," it warned China in a statement.

Norbu, also said the six Tibetans, including one new protester who replaces

Ngodub, had resumed the disrupted hunger strike here.

Candles were lit at the site where Ngodub set himself on fire.

"The hunger strike is on ... hundreds now want to join the protest," said Norbu.

The Tibetans say India broke up the hunger strike to appease China during the first-ever visit by a Chinese army chief, General Fu Quanyou, which began on Sunday.

Ngodub died just a few hours after the Dalai Lama visited the hospital on Tuesday.

The Dalai Lama also met six other Tibetans admitted after the hunger strike they launched on March 10 was broken up.

The Nobel laureate Tuesday said he was sad at Ngodub's self-immolation. "I am deeply saddened by this."

"For many years, I have been able to persuade Tibetan people to eschew violence in our freedom struggle. Today, it is clear a sense of frustration and urgency is building up among many Tibetans as seen by the unto-death hunger strike and yesterday's tragic incident."

"This frustration stems from the fact that the Tibetan people ... are being gradually wiped out from the face of the earth.

"They are prepared to die not for their selfish ends but for the rights of six million Tibetans."

"I have made every effort for the past 20 years for the self-rule of the Tibetans but I have failed," the Tibetan god-king said.

A militant section of the Tibetan activists do not believe in absolute non-violence and often differ with the Dalai Lama over anti-Chinese strategy.

Chinese troops marched into Tibet in 1951. Apart from the Dalai Lama, who fled his homeland following a failed anti-Chinese uprising in 1959, India is also home to more than 100,000 Tibetan refugees.

Ngodub was an ex-soldier of the Special Frontier Force, a Tibetan wing of the India army raised after the 1962 Sino-Indian war for covert cross-border operations.