By Choekyi Lhamo
DHARAMSHALA, July 13: Tibetan activist groups Free Tibet, International Tibet Network (ITN), Students for a Free Tibet (SFT) and the global ethical consumer group SumOfUs projected messages of protest onto the walls of Chinese embassy and other sites across London. Activists carried out a series of projections on Friday highlighting China’s atrocities on Tibetans, Uyghurs, Chinese, and in Hong Kong.
John Jones, the Campaigns and Advocacy Manager at Free Tibet, said, “The CCP won’t have enjoyed the events at the Chinese Embassy last night. The Party interprets freedom of speech as a challenge and a threat, hence its repressive rule in Tibet, its persecution of Uyghurs and its brutal crackdown in Hong Kong . . . For a brief moment, the Chinese Embassy was turned into a monument of resistance, a symbol of all those who resist CCP rule in the name of human rights, self-determination and freedom.”
The projections displayed the message “China fails freedom: Free Tibet, Free Hong Kong, Free Uyghurs” at the embassy in London. Messages of protest were also seen at the Apple Store in Covent Garden and the headquarters of The Economist to call the attention that both companies have “facilitated the Chinese Communist Party’s repression and its intensive international propaganda efforts.”
The groups also projected a video onto the Apple Store building to demand the reversal of its decision to ban a range of apps from their app store in China including VPNs that Tibetans in Tibet depend on to communicate safely with the outside world.
An image was also projected onto the headquarters of The Economist which asked the editors if they had dropped their collaboration with the Chinese state media company called the Beijing Review under the CCP’s control. The paid ‘advertorials’ branded ‘China Focus’ appeared in The Economist earlier this year lauding CCP’s response to the COVID-19 outbreak. Beijing Review also ran a number of controversial articles on its own website claiming that the mass re-education camps in East Turkistan are training centres that “bring hope” to the Uyghur community and applauded the “60 years of democratic reform in Tibet.”
Scores of protest have erupted across the world against China including the recent protest by Tibetans at the Chinese embassy on Saturday in New Delhi, India. Tibetan National Congress (TNC) also mobilised Tibetans on the front of the United Nations Headquarters in New York calling for Tibet’s independence on July 8. Moreover, the largest pro-independence NGO Tibetan Youth Congress (TYC) held a public demonstration calling for boycott of Chinese goods in Dharamshala on Friday.
