France’s Opposition Green party will boycott an address by Chinese President Hu Jintao to the lower house of Parliament this week in protest at Beijing’s “flouting” of human rights, a lawmaker said.
Noel Mamere, who was the Greens’ candidate for president in the 2002 elections, said his party did not want to “give their support to a regime that regularly flouts human rights”.
A lawmaker from the ruling conservative UMP party, Herve Mariton, and Jean-Louis Idiart from the opposition socialists also both said last week that they would not turn up at Mr Hu’s appearance before the National Assembly on Tuesday.
Mr Mamere lashed out at Paris mayor Bertrand Delanoe, a socialist, and the French authorities for “once again rolling out the red carpet to those responsible” for the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.
“We do not understand how [Mr Delanoe] could have refused to let Chinese dissidents speak and overlooked at all costs the victims of a Stalinist regime,” he said.
The head of the French parliamentary committee on Tibet, Lionnel Luca, announced last week that he intended to boycott the speech “by the President of the world’s largest dictatorship”.
Mr Hu starts a four-day state visit to France Monday, marking 40 years of diplomatic relations between the countries and sealing what the government in Paris hopes is a growing strategic and economic alliance.
