Tibetan youth on indefinite hunger strike in New Delhi

New Delhi/ Patna, July 28 : Members of the Tibetan Youth Congress go on indefinite hunger strike here on Monday to garner international attention for their freedom struggle.

With the Olympics approaching, Tibetans are trying to reinvigorate their freedom movement and protest against what they see as China's illegal occupation of their homeland.

The Tibetan Youth Congress alleged that the Chinese authorities in Tibet have imposed serious restrictions and the situation there is quite serious.

"We started from today because situation in Tibet is really serious right now because of the historic uprising by Tibetans in Tibet. Previously, we had pictures, videos that came out from Tibet with all the protests but because of serious restrictions by the Chinese government. Tibet is under seize right now and that's why we feel that we are the voice for the Tibetans inside Tibet and Tibetan youth congress, it's our responsibility to start this campaign and to internationalize the issue of Tibet," said Tsewang Rigzin, president of the Tibetan Youth Congress (TYC).

Tibetan Youth Congress, which is struggling to restore Tibet's independence and opposes Beijing's right to host the Olympics for its alleged appalling Human rights record, vowed to launch a mass movement on August 7 on the principles of Mahatma Gandhi's non-violent struggle.

Beijing Olympics will begin on August 8th.

Meanwhile, the relay torch for the cause of Tibetan independence has reached Patna after going around 60 countries.

Tibetan activists staged a torch-lighting ceremony outside Olympia in Greece on March 10 for the start of a global torch relay, called as 'Tibet Freedom Torch Relay', to protest against decades of Chinese rule over the Himalayan region.

"This Tibetan freedom torch is fight for justice and it's a fight against the human right violation that is taking place in China and Tibet' especially Tibet," said Tenzin Tamdin, Olympic coordinator, International Tibet Support Network.

Tibetans-in-exile across the world have been holding rallies and demonstrations to protest against Chinese policies in Tibet.

Critics accuse China of repressing Tibetans' religious aspirations, especially their veneration for the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989.

China says it has spent billions of dollars developing the impoverished Himalayan region, and raised its living standards.

And it has repeatedly said that it wants to keep politics out of the August Games.

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 its international 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