Exiled Tibetans to go on hunger strike from July 28

Dharamsala (Himachal Pradesh), July 21 : The Tibetan Youth Congress (TYC) will go on a hunger strike from July 28 in New Delhi against the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

The protest would be a part of the 'Tibetan People's Mass Movement' programme.

Tsewang Rigzin, the president of TYC, told reporters in Dharamshala on Monday that they were demanding the "immediate end to the gruesome suppression of Tibetans inside Tibet and the unconditional release of all Tibetan political prisoners."

"We are also demanding convincing evidence to prove the well-being and the whereabouts of his holiness Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, the 11th Panchen Lama of Tibet, and to allow independent and neutral international fact finding delegation media and humanitarian organisations to assess the current situation in Tibet," added Rigzin.

China resumed fence-mending talks with envoys of Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, on July 1st in a move that could burnish itsnternational image weeks before the Chinese capital hosts the Olympics.

It is the second closed-door meeting between the representatives of the Dalai Lama and the Chinese government since rioting erupted in Tibet in March and heaped international pressure on China to deal with the Nobel laureate, who fled into exile in India in 1959 after an abortive uprising against the Chinese rule.

About 134,000 Tibetans live in exile, a vast majority of them in India or Nepal. Of them less than half were born in their homeland.

ANI