Pan-green camp politicians yesterday joined human rights advocates in calling on the government to boycott the Beijing Winter Olympics, while announcing that they would hold a “Boycott Beijing 2022” march in Taipei tomorrow.
The march would start at 10am in front of the Bank of China office building on Songren Road near the Taipei City Government offices in Xinyi District (信義) and end at Taipei 101, they told a media briefing outside the Legislative Yuan.
Taiwan has a pivotal role in protecting human rights and freedom in the Asia-Pacific region, said independent Legislator Freddy Lim (林昶佐), who led the event.
Photo: CNA
Citing China’s increased oppression of ethnic minority groups, Lim said: “The Tibetan and Uighur peoples, as well those in Hong Kong, have placed their hope in Taiwan.”
“International communities have voiced concern, and are planning a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Olympics... Taiwan must be involved, we cannot stay out of this movement,” he said.
Lim said that he had recently had an online conversation with US NBA star Enes Kanter Freedom, who has spoken out about labor camps, torture and the forced sterilization of Uighurs in China’s Xinjiang region, as well as Beijing’s treatment of Tibetans and Hong Kongers.
Together with critics of China, Freedom is leading a drive to boycott the Winter Games in Beijing.
“After the COVID-19 situation subsides, we hope to invite him for a visit, to organize an international summit meeting on human rights issues,” Lim said.
DPP Legislator Fan Yun (范雲) spoke about the plight of Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai (彭帥) and China’s “genocide policies,” saying that they have caused Uighur women “untold suffering and pain.”
“China’s actions are like that of Nazi Germany,” she said, comparing the Beijing Games with the 1936 Berlin Games.
Australia, Lithuania and the US and have announced diplomatic boycotts of the Beijing Winter Olympics, Fan said.
“Tibetans are living in miserable conditions. In the 70 years since China’s takeover of Tibet, the religion, culture and education systems of Tibetans have been destroyed,” Human Rights Network for Tibet and Taiwan director Tashi Tsering (扎西慈仁) said.
Tsering accused the Chinese government of soliciting YouTubers from other countries to film “fraudulent” videos showing that the Tibetan people are “living in happiness.”
“It is the Chinese government’s attempt at brainwashing the whole world regarding what is happening in Tibet,” he said. “We want to tell people that you cannot trust ... the Chinese Communist Party.”
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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