What Is Free Tibet Campaign?
Mission Statement
Free Tibet Campaign stands for the Tibetans' right to determine their own future.
It campaigns for an end to China's occupation of Tibet
and for the Tibetans' fundamental human rights to be respected.
Founded in 1987, Free Tibet Campaign generates active support by educating people about the situation in Tibet.
It is independent of all governments and is funded by its members and supporters.
Dear President Rogge,
I strongly urge the IOC to fulfil its pledge that it would ensure that China improved its human rights record in the run up to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games:
April 2002 you said: the IOC is a responsible organisation and … if human rights are not acted upon to our satisfaction then we will act. But on April 25 2007, when pressed on issues of China's stance on human rights in Tibet, the IOC said: We are not in a position that we can give instructions to governments as to how they ought to behave.
- Despite your promise, the staging of the Games in Beijing has not improved human rights in China and Tibet
- Free and unrestricted reporting from China and Tibet was a condition of the Games being awarded to China. Yet foreign journalists now need special permits to go to Tibet and are under surveillance there
- Without free reporting you are giving China license to hide its systematic human rights abuses in Tibet
Time is running out for you to act.
- I demand that the IOC forces China to drop its insistence on special permits to journalists and commit to remove any surveillance of journalists and their interviewees.
Signed:
Join Team Tibet: http://www.freetibet.org/campaigns/olympic_07/index.php
Dear Prime Minister,
Please accept my congratulations for agreeing to meet the Dalai Lama in May
I appeal to you now to condemn the Chinese government for imposing a media blackout in Tibet and all Tibetan-populated areas of China. The UK government must demand that British and other foreign journalists are allowed unfettered access to report unfolding events in Tibet.
- I appeal to you also to send a clear message to China that it must negotiate full autonomy for the Tibetan people in their own country. This you can do by meeting officially with the Dalai Lama at 10 Downing Street in May and by calling on the Chinese government to hold the next round of negotiations with the Tibetan government-in-exile in a third country, attended by independent observers.
- I urge you to act immediately on the media blackout and to do everything in your power to broker a peaceful, equitable and last settlement in Tibet.
Yours sincerely,
Sign the petition : http://www.freetibet.org/campaigns/dalaipetition/index.php
Beijing boycott 'counter productive', says Fraser
Malcolm Fraser says a boycott would be "totally divisive as it was in the past".
Photo: Rebecca Hallas
Arjun Ramachandran
Malcolm Fraser, the only Australian Prime Minister to advocate an Olympics boycott, said western leaders have no right to boycott the Beijing Olympics, an action he regards as "counter productive".
Mr Fraser's resistance to a Beijing boycott came as some European leaders announced plans to stay away from the opening ceremony in Beijing, in protest at China's handling of unrest in Tibet.
Both Czech President Vaclav Klaus and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said they have declined invitations to the opening ceremony.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has also said that boycotting the ceremony remained an option for him.
But Mr Fraser told smh.com.au that western leaders had no right to boycott the games after the Dalai Lama has already rejected it.
"If he's (the Dalai Lama) opposed to a boycott as being a wrong technique - a wrong method to advance the interests of Tibetans - what right have people in Melbourne or Poland or somebody else somewhere else to say: 'No, we are going to impose a boycott', even though the person most affected ... is opposed to it?
"It would be totally divisive as it was in the past," Mr Fraser said.
Mr Fraser said the circumstances in Tibet today were very different to 1980 when, as Prime Minister, he advocated a boycott of the Moscow Games in protest to the then Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan.
"I don't think there's any comparison," he said. "Russia had invaded Afghanistan with a huge army ... Afghanistan had always been independent and free and it was old-fashioned Soviet aggression.
"You can't ignore the very long and ancient relations that existed, and [the] often uneasy relationship, between Tibet and China.
"It has no relationship to the invasion [by] the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War of Afghanistan."
Mr Fraser also said he no longer thought that the Moscow boycott, backed by the United States, had been the right.
"At the time, even though I argued strongly for it - it was government policy - it was not good policy," he said.
"It was extraordinarily divisive between sports and within sports, placed an unreasonable burden on young athletes."
But the pressure on world leaders to make forthright stance was immense, he said.
"I think it's extraordinarily difficult, the pressures are great. But there's a right and wrong way of trying to have influence in these matters."
He said an arrangement similar to that of Hong Kong, which enjoys a high degree of autonomy from China, might be an outcome for Tibet.
"Hong Kong has prospered greatly since handing back from Britain to China. Solutions along those lines I believe could be achievable."
"I will be president of the (European) Union at the time of the opening ceremony. I must therefore know what the others think before establishing a position on whether I will go to the opening ceremony or not," Sarkozy said on Thursday.
"I will refrain from saying whether or not I am going to the ceremony and whether other initiatives should be taken," Sarkozy said, adding that his decision would depend on how the situation in Tibet evolved."
http://sport.guardian.co.uk/breakingnews/feedstory/0,,-7416230,00.html
Several leaders of eastern European states, who entered the EU after decades under communism, have announced they will not attend the ceremony in the Chinese capital on August 8.
Czech President Vaclav Klaus and his Estonian counterpart Toomas Hendrik Ilves along with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk have all said they won't be attending.
"My evaluation is very clear: the presence of politicians at the inauguration of the Olympics seems inappropriate," Tusk said Thursday.
Fallout From Tibet Is Test for China's Rulers
Response to Unrest Spotlights Harsh Tactics,
Leaving Cloud Over Olympics
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, March 28, 2008; Page A01
BEIJING, March 27 -- The riots in Tibet two weeks ago have turned into a major challenge to China's leaders, whose decision to use military force and restrict media access has cast a shadow over hopes for an unblemished Olympics this summer.
The uprising in the remote Himalayan region lasted for barely more than a day. But it generated a worldwide swell of concern. Now, the Games -- intended to be a festive coming-out party for modern China -- could become a dramatic reminder that the Communist Party still relies on Leninist police tactics and Orwellian censorship to enforce its monopoly on power.
"This is exactly what the party leaders didn't want," said Li Datong, a senior magazine editor who was fired in 2006 after an essay in his publication challenged the party's official history. "This has become a real headache for them."
The fallout from Tibet has not subsided. In Ancient Olympia on Monday, pro-Tibet demonstrators disrupted a ceremony to light the Olympic torch. on Tuesday, French President Nicolas Sarkozy suggested there might be a boycott of the Games' opening ceremony. And on Thursday, as Chinese authorities led foreign reporters on a tour of region in an effort to demonstrate that it had been tamed, a group of monks confronted the journalists, shouting that they were being denied religious freedom.
Criticisms of China on human rights issues have long been rife among foreign activists and some governments, analysts noted, but the Tibet crisis raised their global prominence just as the Olympic Games provided a ready forum to push the message. The protesters who disrupted the torch ceremony in Greece, for instance, got attention on a level that they could not have dreamed of before the riots in Tibet on March 14.
"The leadership could be riding a real tiger with the Tibet issue, in terms of foreign opinion," said David L. Shambaugh, director of the China policy program at George Washington University and author of a new book on the Chinese Communist Party. "Various and sundry nongovernmental human rights activists smell blood, and they will all be using Tibet to press their causes as well. This will place unprecedented external pressure on the regime, at least in terms of public relations."
With Tibet unrest having seized the public's imagination abroad, the Chinese government already has lost its battle to keep politics out of the Olympics, said Li, the editor. He said the government should brace itself for an onslaught of protests over Tibet, Darfur, human rights and other causes before and during the Games, both in China and outside.
"It's over," he said. "The Olympic Games have already been kidnapped by the Tibet issue." The issue has become so huge, it has been mentioned in the race for the White House, he added: "Even Hillary's talking about it."
The role, that of a modern country embracing the world, has already been compromised by the unrest in Tibet and the way the world is viewing the government's reaction, the analysts said. Shambaugh, at George Washington University, characterized the government's attempt so far to manage its image in the aftermath of the violence as "heavy-handed" -- resorting to vilification of the Dalai Lama and questioning the motives of foreign critics.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/27/AR2008032703704.html?hpid=topnews
Polish Premier Skips Olympic Opening to Protest Tibet (Update2)
By Marek Miler and Katya Andrusz
March 27 (Bloomberg) -- Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said he'll skip the opening of the Olympic Games in Beijing, as his government asked other European Union members to join its protest in support of demonstrators in Tibet.
Tusk won't attend the ceremony, Agnieszka Liszka, his spokeswoman, said by phone. Liszka wouldn't say whether Tusk, a veteran of Poland's Solidarity anti-communist opposition movement in the 1980s, will attend other events.
``Questions of human rights are unusually important for Polish society after years in which they were violated in our country,'' Deputy Foreign Minister Ryszard Schnepf told the Dziennik newspaper in an article published today, adding that Poland will try to convince other European Union nations that the bloc should speak out more strongly on Tibet.
Czech President Vaclav Klaus said on his Web site that he won't attend the games.
Western nations including the U.S., Germany and Britain have urged the Chinese authorities to open a dialogue with the Dalai Lama.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601085&sid=aHhXLAzSqu0c&refer=europe
Czechs, Poles to boycott Olympic opening
Leaders from the Czech Republic and Poland have declined invitations to attend the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Beijing, in protest of recent crackdowns on Tibetan protesters.
Czech President Vaclav Klaus says those who voted to give the Games to China should now not be surprised by the recent trouble.
"China is what it is," he said.
Mr Klaus and some Czech ministers will boycott the ceremony.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk questioned whether world leaders should attend, given China's conduct.
"The presence of politicians at the Games' inauguration seems inappropriate," he said.
Mr Tusk says he will try to convince other European Union countries that they should speak out more strongly on the issue of Tibet.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is currently visiting London, repeated that he may also boycott the ceremony.
But British Prime Minister Gordon Brown says he will be attending.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/03/28/2201279.htm
Beijing 2008 Olympics: Background Information
Since 2001, when Beijing was awarded the Olympic Games, Free Tibet Campaign has repeatedly called for action by the IOC and the UK Government to turn into reality the International Olympic Commitee's (IOC) famous "bet", that staging the Olympics in China would be a force for good.
Free Tibet Campaign's key demands include:
China to honour the Olympic Truce by entering into unconditional dialogue over the future of Tibet with the Dalai Lama's representatives.
That China adheres to its promise of media freedom by 2008 (a promise made during Beijing's winning press conference in July 2001).
That the IOC makes the content of the Host City Contract public, particularly those parts that relate to the control of dissent at the time of the Olympics.
Tibet campaigners have met with the IOC on two occasions - in December 2001 and October 2002. In the latter meeting, the IOC refused to lift the ban on political meetings and demonstrations during the Games, or to disclose the controversial Host City contract, despite promises by Jacques Rogge, the IOC President, to protect human rights.
In July 2005 Free Tibet Campaign congratulated London on its successful bid to host the 2012 Olympic Games, announced by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in Singapore. Whatever the value to Britain of hosting the Olympics, the decision provides Free Tibet Campaign with many more opportunities to raise awareness of its Beijing 2008 Olympic campaign. As Britain has become a fellow custodian with China of the Olympic ideal, Free Tibet Campaign is calling upon the UK Government to commit to a special initiative that will secure a negotiated settlement for Tibet and improve human rights in China before the Beijing Games of 2008.
"If our Government really wants to make Britain proud, it will back Tibet," said Yael Weisz-Rind, Director of Free Tibet Campaign. "We have no doubt that London is capable of hosting a truly great Olympics, but unless there is substantial progress on Tibet and human rights in China, the 2008 Games in Beijing will be badly tarnished."
http://www.freetibet.org/campaigns/olympics/background.html
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