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CROSS-STRAIT FLIGHTS: Tibetan group welcomes PRC tourists to ‘freedom’

Tibetans, Falun Gong practitioners and unificationists took the opportunity to highlight their causes yesterday as the first cross-strait charter flights arrived.

The groups welcomed Chinese tourists with placards proclaiming their views outside Taipei Songshan Airport on Dunhua N Road.

“Human rights for China, independence for Tibet,” Tibetans and their supporters shouted, waving the Tibetan flag as buses carrying Chinese tourists passed by. “We welcome Chinese tourists to breathe the air of freedom in Taiwan!”

Chinese visitors waved at the Tibetan demonstrators and took pictures.

Across the street, members of the Concentric Patriotism Association of the Republic of China (ROC) — a group that promotes unification between Taiwan and China — also staged a rally, with signs welcoming “Mainland compatriots.”

Members of the association — one dressed as a Chinese police officer — waved the ROC and Chinese flags.

The demonstrations were peaceful and the Tibetans and pro-unificationists interacted only briefly when a Tibetan demonstrator walked across the street to hand flyers to the other group.

“In addition to seeing the beautiful landscape and meeting the friendly people of Taiwan, I hope that these Chinese visitors will be able to see what a truly free society is like,” said Chow Mei-li (周美里), chairwoman of the Taiwan Friends of Tibet.

Taiwan Tibetan Welfare Association chairman Rinzin Tsering said that Tibetans have nothing against the Chinese people.

“As a gesture of goodwill and friendship, the Tibetans in Taiwan heartily welcome Chinese brothers and sisters visiting this country on the first direct flights between China and Taiwan,” he told a crowd of Tibetans and Taiwanese at a ceremony to launch the Taiwan leg of the Tibetan Freedom Torch Relay at the Liberty Square in Taipei.

“The Tibetans have always maintained that their struggle is against the Chinese regime and its policies in Tibet “[and] has never been a struggle against the Chinese people,” he said.

Rinzin condemned the Chinese government for stoking tensions between Chinese and Tibetans.

“In the aftermath of the recent events in Tibet, the Chinese government has used deceit and distorted images to manipulate the whole Tibet issue to fan nationalism and create a racial divide between the Tibetan and Chinese peoples,” he said.

Meanwhile, a group of Falun Gong practitioners demonstrated outside the National Palace Museum in Taipei yesterday as hundreds of Chinese tourists arrived.

Separately, a Tainan City Government official said yesterday the city had persuaded Falun Gong practitioners to stop their long-term presence in front of a popular tourist attraction.

Director-General of the city’s Cultural Affairs Bureau Hsu Keng-hsiu (許耿修) said an exact date for the group of practitioners — who have regularly handed out information about the persecution of Falun Gong in China — to move from outside Fort Provincia (赤崁樓) had not been set.

Hsu said the city government would allow hotels to decide whether to fly the Chinese flag to welcome tourists expected to arrive there on Tuesday.

Although the group of Falun Gong devotees at Fort Provincia had been asked to move, Hsu said another group of practitioners in front of Fort Zeelandia, another tourist attraction, had rented public space there and would be allowed to stay.

ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY STAFF WRITER
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