Tibetans stage hunger strike for Taiwan residency

Thursday, December 17, 2009

DPA
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Taipei - More than 50 Tibetan exiles have been on hunger strike for three days Thursday outside a Taiwan government office, demanding to be granted residential status based on humanitarian concerns.

'They [the authorities] claimed we are not authentic Tibetans and must leave Taiwan,' said one of the hunger strikers outside the Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission office in Taipei.

He said 56 Tibetans face deportation by December 29 because the commission would not confirm their Tibetan status, causing the immigration agency to deny their residency applications.

Some 134 exiled Tibetans living in in Taiwan since 1999 have faced deportation for failing to apply for proper residency status.

The government allowed them to stay out of humanitarian concerns as long as they could prove they were Tibetan.

In a review of their identities, the commission confirmed the status of 78 people , but found the rest questionable as some of them did not know how to speak Tibetan or had no idea of what a khata - a traditional Tibetan offering scarf - was, commission officials said.

Chen Chieh-ju, a lawmaker of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party, said two of the protestors were already in critical condition and the government should allow them to stay. 'After all, it is impossible for the government to deport them back to Tibet, which is now controlled by China,' she said.