NEW YORK, September 22 – Earlier today a group of approximately twenty Tibetans and supporters staged a surprise protest outside the Asia Society against the Chinese Ambassador to the United States Zhou Wenzhong, who was there to deliver a speech on “The Future of US-China Relations.”
Tibetans and supporters, representing TYC, TWA and SFT in the New York area, waited in the lobby of the Asia Society building, pretending to be customers looking to buy museum sovenirs. At about 11:50 a.m. when the Ambassador drove up to the entrance, the protestors jumped out from behind the shelves, pulled out Tibetan national flags from their pockets, and started chanting, “Shame on Zhou, Shame on China, Free Tibet Now.” Confused and shaken, Ambassador Zhou was quickly shuffled away by his security guards into the elevator. The protestors were then moved to the sidewalk, where they continued the loud and peaceful chanting of slogans.
After the conclusion of the program at about 1:45 p.m. the security guards and the police started preparing a quiet exit for the Chinese Ambassador. But the building had only two exits, and there were protestors stationed at both of them. Eventually, the Chinese Ambassador exited through the back door, where the protestors chanted and waved the Tibetan flags for a full two minutes while he maneauvered his way through the crowd to his limousine.
“The protest that we staged today is part of a long-term strategy to make China’s occupation of Tibet more and more costly – today, in social terms by publicly shaming a Chinese leader and disrupting his business… until the day when the cost of occupation exceeds the benefits of it,” said Lhadon Tethong, Executive Director of Students for a Free Tibet.
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Correction from SFT: An earlier version of this release inadvertently misrepresented Ambassador Richard Holbrooke’s remarks to the activists who staged the protest. Ambassador Holbrooke said that he and Asia Society could not take sides in the Tibet-China issue. When asked, he did say that the Chinese Ambassador had appeared to be affected and surprised by the protest.
The release also mistakenly said Ambassador Holbrooke was the U.S. Ambassador to China when he was in fact the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations from 1999-2001.
