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Activists condemn crackdown

A man displays a photo of an alleged Tibetan victim of armed Chinese suppression during a press conference jointly held by the Tibet Religious Foundation of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the Taiwan Tibet Exchange Foundation in Taipei. PHOTO: LO PEI-DER, TAIPEI TIMES

Twenty-one exiled Chinese democracy activists condemned Beijing's violent crackdown on protests in Tibet during a press conference in Taipei yesterday.

"We cannot and will not be silent," the activists said in a joint statement. "Our silence will be a message to the brutal Chinese Communist Party [CCP] regime that it could benefit from the Olympics while hurting its own people."

The activists, who came from several countries, including the US and Australia, have come to Taiwan to observe tomorrow's presidential election.

They went into exile following their participation in various campaigns or demonstrations for democracy, including the Tiananmen Massacre in 1989.

"A beast does not show its wild side everyday -- but it does at key moments," said Yang Jianli (楊建利), chairman of the Institute for China in Taiwan.

"A lot of people have the wrong idea about the communist regime" because of China's rapid economic development, Yang told the press conference. "People forget that the Chinese communists have always been violent at heart."

Wang Dan (王丹) agreed, saying that the repression in Tibet "shows the world that there are serious social problems behind the economic prosperity in China."

Hence, all those who are threatened by the regime, "whether you're Tibetan, Taiwanese, a Falung Gong practitioner, a member of the underground churches, or a democracy activist, we should all stand together to make change," Wang said.

Xue Wei (薛偉), president of the Chinese Democratic Solidarity Union, accused the Beijing government of being insincere about peacefully resolving the Tibet issue.

"Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao [溫家寶] said that he will hold talks with the Dalai Lama under two conditions: first, the Dalai Lama give up Tibetan independence, and second, the Dalai Lama must urge the Tibetans to stop acts of violence," Xue said.

"But these two conditions are what the Dalai Lama has been advocating for years," he said.

The activists further urged the Chinese government to allow freedom of the press, release all political prisoners, stop arrests of human rights and democracy activists and ban blacklisting.

In another media conference, Tibetan Representative to Taiwan Tsegyam showed pictures of the dead bodies of demonstrators and video clips of military trucks and tanks moving into Tibet.

The Tibetan government in exile had received the images from various media organizations and private sources, he said.

"These images show that the killing and repression are still going on," Tsegyam said.
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