As he swept into Buckingham Palace in a gilded carriage drawn by six white horses, Chinese President Hu Jintao could have been forgiven for feeling a little confused.
On one side of The Mall, a crowd of a few hundred largely silent supporters waved the red flag of China and held banners saying: “Welcome, leader of the motherland.” On the other side, a boisterous but similar-sized crowd chanted: “China, China, out, out” amid a blizzard of Tibetan flags in red, yellow and blue.
Perhaps it was fitting that the President of China be greeted by such a polarised response at the start of his first official visit to Britain: the community of 400,000 or so people of Chinese and Tibetan origin living in Britain is nothing if not divided on the subject.
Tibetan protester Tseten Samdup said he had come to demand an end to the 55-year Chinese occupation of his country. “The Chinese Government should start negotiations with (the) Dalai Lama and free our political prisoners,” he said. Mr Tseten’s parents fled Tibet in 1959 as Chinese rule tightened.
He grew up in a refugee camp in Nepal, then in India. “I have never seen my country. But I have become aware of what’s been done to Tibet through my contact with Tibetans who have been imprisoned for over three decades,” he said.
Mr Hu presided over the imposition of martial law in Tibet in 1988 as party secretary of the Tibet Autonomous Region, during which thousands of Tibetan protesters were killed. He also sent a congratulatory telegram to Deng Xiaoping in 1989 for his handling of the upheaval in Tiananmen Square.
