Free Tibet

WorldWatch has seen the statement of the Free Tibet Campaign that strongly condemns the use of force by the Chinese authorities in their attempts to put down protests by Tibetans in Lhasa and elsewhere in Tibet. Independent eyewitness accounts have verified the use of force to suppress peaceful demonstration led by Tibetan monks.

The Dalai Lama has made a statement calling on the Chinese leadership "to stop using force and address the long-simmering resentment of the Tibetan people". The protests result from the resentment felt deeply by the Tibetan people at decades of state repression of Tibetan Buddhism and the systematic policy of encouraging ever-increasing numbers of Han Chinese to migrate on to the Tibetan Plateau which has marginalised Tibetans in their own homeland. Free Tibet Campaign welcomes calls for restraint made on the Chinese government by the British, American and other national governments and the EU and calls on other governments to make similar calls on the Chinese leadership.