May 9 – About 50 pro-Tibet and Falun Gong campaigners gathered opposite the Chinese embassy in London as China’s Prime Minister Wen Jiabao arrived in the U.K. for a three-day visit.
Waving Tibetan flags and banners calling for the release of religious leaders, the pro-Tibet campaigners called for Wen to engage in talks to seek a resolution to China’s 54-year occupation of Tibet, which lies on a mountain plateau to the north of India and the kingdoms of Bhutan and Nepal.
Envoys of the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual leader, visited Beijing and Tibet in September 2002 and in May and June last year, after a 10-year break in talks between the two sides. After almost a year’s gap since the last talks, the Free Tibet Campaign urged Wen to display the “political courage” he showed when visiting student protesters in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989.
“We’re calling on Wen to demonstrate this courage once again, this time for Tibet, and to push forward the fledgling contact that exists between representatives of the Dalai Lama and his officials,” said Alison Reynolds, director of the Free Tibet Campaign. She called on U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair to express his concern at the situation in Tibet.
With 2004 marking the centenary of Britain’s invasion of Tibet, when forces led by Francis Younghusband advanced on the Tibetan capital Lhasa, Reynolds said Britain “needs to be at the forefront” of trying to find a solution to the issue. The Dalai Lama visits the U.K. from May 27 to June 3, and will meet Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.
`Huge Secrecy’
The Free Tibet Campaign criticized the “huge secrecy” surrounding Wen’s visit, and said the group hadn’t been given enough advance warning of Wen’s visit to “liaise responsibly” with the police. Reynolds said the police had “eventually” acceded to the demonstrators’ calls for pro-Chinese demonstrators, who were blocking them, to be moved.
The Chinese were “blocking any view that Wen might have had of protesters, so we asked that they be moved,” said Reynolds. “It’s in China’s interests that exposure to peaceful protest is encouraged.”
British police were criticized in 1999 for their handling of the then Chinese President Jiang Zemin’s visit. Pro-Tibet flags and banners were confiscated and the police parked vans in front of demonstrators in London and Cambridge. About 20 police officers were at today’s demonstration.
Beijing considers Tibet to be a part of China and regards statements by foreign leaders about the region to be an affront to its sovereignty. Communist Chinese troops invaded Tibet in 1950 and forced out the Dalai Lama nine years later after Tibetans revolted against Chinese rule.
Banned
Also demonstrating today were practitioners of Falun Gong, a group banned in mainland China. They carried out meditation exercises opposite the embassy, near Oxford Circus. The movement combines elements of Buddhism, Taoism and Chinese folk religion and teaches that good health can be achieved through special exercises.
China banned the movement in July 1999 after about 10,000 followers surrounded Communist Party headquarters in Beijing to demonstrate for official recognition. Since then, supporters have carried out sporadic protests in the city’s Tiananmen Square.
