Zürich, 1. December 2004 – Individual Tibetans filed complaint against the Chinese Embassy, the owner of the website www.china-embassy.ch, and the Chinese Tourist Office in Zürich in the past days. The complaint is lodged with the district attorney of Zurich. The Tibetans believe that the website content violates the regulations of Swiss criminal law against racism that also includes penalty against denial of mass human tragedy (StGB Art. 261bis, Rassendiskriminierung). The group has also informed the Swiss foreign office about the complaint.
Many of the web documents had been object of an earlier formal investigation by the district attorney in 2003. The district attorney decreed thenafter to stop the procedure, because an criminal intent to publicize these wrong facts by the side of the Chinese consulate had not been provable. However, he said, if the Chinese consulate or the Tourist Office don’t change the website or continue to distribute the leaflets a criminal intent has to be assumed and the penal law will be applied.
The afore-mentioned articles can still be found through the site search. According to the Tibetans, the repeated assertion on the website that Tibet has been „liberated peacefully“ denies and negates the hundreds and thousands of victims in Tibet after the illegal occupation of Tibet in 1949/50. There were also other website articles describing the uprising in 1959, the present situation of Tibetan culture in a total distorted way.
The Chinese officials reacted with anger to the complaint in 2003. The reason is quite obvious. For the first time, an independent court has indirectly established the fact that genocide happened in Tibet and that the Chinese view on the Sino-Tibetan history is not accurate.
Contact:
Tenzin D. Sewo, +41 79 349 24 48, tenzin@sewo.ch
Wangpo Tethong, +41 78 744 30 10, w.tethong@bluewin.ch
