Tibetan Protest against Xi Jinping’s US APEC Visit
Report and photos by Phil Pasquini
Washington: A large group of Tibetan Americans protested on November 11 at the White House against Chinese President Xi Jinping’s attendance at the upcoming Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leader’s Summit next week in San Francisco that President Biden will also attend. The White House and Chinese authorities have acknowledged that the two leaders will meet face-to-face in a separate summit to defuse the tensions building between the two superpowers.
They are scheduled to address a laundry list of issues including, North Korea, Ukraine, Fentanyl, Taiwan, trade, high tech, and AI, among others, in their first such meeting in a year.
The Tibetans demonstrating outside of the White House are demanding that President Biden discuss the issue of Tibet with China’s leader regarding human rights, an end to colonial Chinese language boarding schools for Tibetan children, releasing all political prisoners and to end the genocide of the Tibetan people, while calling for a Free Tibet.
At the rally, one speaker described the situation of the illegal Chinese occupation as “getting bad to worse. The name of Tibet along with the language are banned.” He went on to say that it has been 70 years of Chinese occupation and that Tibetans who left the country now fear, with diminishing hope, that they will never be able to return to a free Tibet.
“We came here with one message, please wake up now, the Chinese have fooled all the world. We demand President Biden speak for Tibet. Please don’t get fooled by the Chinese Communist Party. The Chinese keep fooling us, Free Tibet, China Out.” The group is also calling for an end to the continued oppression of Tibetans and for justice.
As a bargaining chip in seeking their demands, they called for the US to withhold trade with China. While facing the White House, and holding a massive Tibetan flag, they chanted loudly “No Human Rights, No Trade” in an attempt to gain the President and First Lady’s attention, who had just returned from the annual Veteran’s Day ceremony at Arlington Cemetery.
Many in the crowd carried signs and wore t-shirts emblazoned with “No Welcome for Xi Jinping” along with messages announcing their resistance to the threat that China poses to democracy and freedom. One protester held up two signs, “USA Stand Up For Tibet” and the other saying “Free Palestine, Let Gaza Live.”
In an open letter to President Biden, the activists outlined their demands regarding the issues that the president should advocate during his meeting with Xi Jinping to begin the substantial changes they are demanding in Tibet.
After singing the national anthem of Tibet, a moment of silence was observed for all those that have died since the occupation began in 1950 when China’s Liberation Army (PLA) invaded the country a little less than a year after the Communists took control of mainland China.
(Phil Pasquini is a freelance journalist and photographer. His reports and photographs appear in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs and Nuze.ink. He is the author of Domes, Arches and Minarets: A History of Islamic-Inspired Buildings in America.)
