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Fasting unto death to free Tibet

Six determined Tibetan hunger strikers, lying inside a makeshift tent at Jantar Mantar park in Delhi, are preparing to die after 45 days without food in an attempt to free their Himalayan homeland from the Chinese occupation.

Ever since they started the suicidal mission to save Tibet on March 10, a host of national and international leaders have visited the Tibetan activists, aged 25 to 70, asking them to give up the fast unto death.

Doctors attending on the Tibetan protesters say the weakest among them, 70-year-old Kunsang La, could die any time now.

But Kunsang is determined to die for the cause of his birthplace. "I am ready to sacrifice my life for Tibet," he says. Truly, he has coined a slogan of sacrificial death and pinned it beside him which he says is a tribute to Tibet's cause and immortality.

"The time you decide to sacrifice, the time you promise to die, the hour you take oath and the minute you sit for hunger strike unto death are the time we wonder the most," it reads.

Nearly two dozen monks and nuns, dressed in traditional Tibetan attire, sit beside Kunsang and other hunger strikers -- Palzom La (68), Dawa Gyalpo (50), Dawa Psering (58), Karma Sichoela (25) and Yungdrung Tsering (28) -- continuing to pray day and night for Tibet's freedom.

Gyalpo, determined to fight for his country, pulls out a postcard of Mount Kailas, a holy mountain in western Tibet, his birthplace. "I wanted to live there. But I can no longer go there, till Tibet is freed from China," he says. "Therefore, I am now ready to die."

"We will not give up until the United Nations helps save our birthplace for the rest of our lives," Gyalpo told Rediff On The NeT. "The UN's mission is to solve problems everywhere in the world. But then why not Tibet too?"

For Gyalpo and his friends, the only nourishment for the past 45 days has been a daily glass of water and a swallow of smoke from burning Tsampa barley which the Tibetans believe can strengthen the spirits within the body.

The indefinite hunger strike, organised by the Tibetan Youth Congress, is timed to coincide with an upcoming UN session on human rights in Geneva. But it has considerably upset the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual and temporal leader, and put him in a moral bind.

Suicide for a cause violates the Tibetan religious belief in non-violence. Thus the Dalai Lama nearly wept before the hunger strikers when he visited them last week. "I consider hunger strike unto death as a kind of violence. However, I cannot offer them suggestions for an alternative method," he said.

The Dalai Lama, who fled Tibet in 1959, lives at Dharmasala, in Himachal Pradesh. While six million Tibetans still live in Chinese-occupied Tibet, some 100,000 followers of the Dalai Lama are scattered in 50-odd settlements all over India.

The Dalai Lama's government-in-exile in Dharmasala looks after the interests of the Tibetan refugees. Dharmasala has most of the Tibetan government offices, temples, monasteries, a nunnery, a school for dialectics, a library of Tibetan works, an archives, a Japanese-designed centre of Tibetan religion and culture and two hospitals.

Most Tibetans would find it sinful and unthinkable to disobey the Dalai Lama, but many fear that any attempt to halt the ongoing fast unto death could increase the tensions within the free-Tibet movement sponsored by the TYC in India.

TYC activists say they will kill themselves, till the UN agrees to three of their demands: debating Tibet in the UN General Assembly in Geneva based on its resolutions of 1959, 1961 and 1965, appointing a special rapporteur to investigate human rights violations in the Chinese-occupied Tibet and naming a special envoy to monitor Tibetan affairs.

According to TYC president Tseten Norbu, the UN officials have not yet responded to their demands. "We are told that the UN on its own cannot do anything. We need the help of at least one country to raise the Tibetan issue in the UN General Assembly," he told Rediff ON The NeT.

Many international groups have supported the Tibetans's hunger strike in Delhi. But observers say no country would dare take up the Tibetan issue in the UN for the fear of incurring China's wrath.

Norbu, however, says their fight for the homeland will continue. "We are ready to sacrifice our lives for Tibet's freedom," he said. "We wanted to do something that would become part of Tibetan history. It will be an example to future generations," he said.

"Tibet is dying without freedom. So what is the meaning of us living without getting our birth right?" the TYC president asked.

The TYC says China's occupation of Tibet has resulted in the death of more than 1.2 million Tibetans and destruction of over 6,000 monasteries and temples -- the repositories of Tibet's rich cultural heritage.

Hundreds of Tibetans from refugee settlements in India and abroad have volunteered to take part in the suicidal fast.

However, the hunger strike is becoming an embarrassment for the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government in India, which is planning a series of bilateral trade and peace pacts to improve relations with China.

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