World Tibet Network News Saturday, May 23, 1998

NEW DELHI, May 23 (AFP) - Around 150 Tibetan protestors clashed with Indian police on Saturday as they tried to storm the Chinese embassy in a protest against China's occupation of Tibet, witnesses said. The protestors, including monks and nuns, arrived outside the embassy in motorized rickshaws and tried to force their way into the complex, but theywere stopped by police some 30 metres (100 feet) from the compound. Scuffles broke out when police tried to take the protesters away in two separate buses, witnesses said. "Many of the Tibetans resisted the move to force them into the bus. Then ascuffle broke out with police, who baton-charged them.

Two Tibetans were injured in the incident," a witness said. He said the protestors shouted anti-Chinese slogans such as "Free Tibet","Tibet belongs to Tibetans" and "Chinese get out of Tibet". A spokesman for the Tibetan Youth Congress, which counts more than 10,000 supporters in India and tens of thousands inside Tibet, said all the demonstrators had been arrested. The Tibetans, who fled to India after an anti-Chinese uprising failed intheir Himalayan homeland in 1959, said the protest was to mark the killings of political detainees at Drapchi prison in Tibet on May 23, 1951.

The spokesman said after the death of the prisoners on that date the communist government of China forced a Tibetan delegation to sign an "infamous agreement" giving legitimacy to Chinese rule. "This is a black day for us," one of the protestors said. Tibetan leader Dalai Lama has been living in India since he fled his homeland in 1959 after a failed anti-Chinese uprising, and India is also home to around 100,000 Tibetan exiles.The anti-Chinese struggle of the exiles turned violent earlier this month when a Tibetan Congress activist committed suicide to protest the Indian police disrupting a marathon hunger strike by six compatriots.