Dorjee Gyalpo forcibly lifted, Vows to continue hunger strike in hospital/ENG

2012. március 20./Phayul.com/TibetPress

DHARAMSHALA, March 20: Dorjee Gyalpo, the eldest of the three Tibetans on hunger strike in front of the United Nations headquarters was forcibly removed from the fast venue and hospitalised against his will by New York Police Department on the 27th day of their fast.

Gyalpo “pleaded and begged” not to be removed but staff from the Emergency Medical Services assisted by NYPD lifted him on a stretcher to an ambulance on standby and took him to the Bellevue hospital March 19.

Tibetan activists and volunteers at the site of the indefinite fast pleaded the police and medical staff not to remove Gyalpo against his will and blocked the ambulance from leaving for about 20 minutes.

“Many Tibetans at the hunger strike site resisted by sitting on the street blocking the ambulance from taking away Dorjee Gyalpo la and pleading NYPD to not take him away,” Tsewang Rigzin, president of Tibetan Youth Congress later said.

However, Gyalpo, 59, has “vowed” to continue his fast even in the hospital according to TYC.

Gyalpo was advised a day earlier by doctors to undergo examination in a hospital but he refused saying that he “will not move an inch.”

"I am not here to go to the hospital, I am here to demand the UN to douse the burning human flames inside Tibet and we will not move an inch until UN answers us,” Gyalpo said.

Gyalpo has lost more than 10 kgs since he began his indefinite fast on February 22, the first day of Tibetan new year, demanding immediate UN intervention in the ongoing crisis inside Tibet.

Born on March 5, 1953 in Kyidong Pang-Shing region of Tibet, Gyalpo escaped to Nepal In 1960 and five years later moved to India. An alumnus of Central School for Tibetans, Kalimpong, he later served as an executive member of the regional chapter of TYC in Mainpat Tibetan settlement.

After resettling in the US in 1992 under the US Tibetan Resettlement Project, Gyalpo remained an active member of the youth congress, participating in many of its campaigns.

Before undertaking the indefinite fast for Tibet, Dorjee had said that his inspiration to participate in this campaign came from a speech by His Holiness the Dalai Lama to him and other members migrating to the United States in 1992 in which the Tibetan spiritual leader called them “representatives of six million Tibetans.”