Human Rights Without Frontiers Int'l urges heads of state to boycott Beijing's Olympic Games

Editor-in-chief: Willy Fautré

Email: info@hrwf.org

HRWF (14.09.07) – Website: http://www.hrwf.net – Email: info@hrwf.net – Human Rights Without Frontiers Int'l is calling upon Heads of State, Prime Ministers, Royal Families, the Heads of the European Institutions, the members of the European Parliament and of national parliaments to ignore any invitation coming from Beijing to attend the Olympic Games in 2008.

This appeal was made public by Willy Fautré, the director of Human Rights Without Frontiers Int'l, at the International Symposium on Human Rights in Tibet organized on 8-9 September in Taipei, by the Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission with Taiwan Culture Foundation and Taiwan Friends of Tibet.

"It is the moral duty of those elected by the citizens of democratic countries not to legitimize by their presence a repressive political regime which does not respect human rights, which denies freedom of association and assembly, freedom of expression, freedom of religion and belief to its citizens, which rejects political diversity and any multi-party system," Fautré was quoted as saying.

"I would not understand that the Belgian Royal Family could accept to sit next to President Hu Jintao while lawyers and other human rights defenders are arrested for defending the social rights of Chinese workers;

I would not understand that Heads of State and Prime Ministers of democratic countries could accept to be part of a show organized by political leaders of a totalitarian regime which refuses to give up death penalty and executes 1,000 people per month;

I would not understand that the President of the European Parliament or the European Commission could accept to share the official gallery of governmental officials while Falun Gong practitioners are tortured in prison and Tibetan monks are prosecuted because they express their loyalty to their spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama (*)," Fautré said in a vibrant appeal addressed to the leaders of world. And he concluded by saying that NGOs around the world had to be vigilant and to prevent any attempt by their political leaders and representatives to legitimize the repressive regime of Beijing by their official presence at the Olympic Games.

(*) Last month, two Tibetans were prosecuted in Sichuan province for allegedly trying to topple the state's power by supporting the return of the Dalai Lama, the Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said. Adak Lopoe, 45, a Tibetan monastery master in Litang county, and his uncle, Runggre Adak, grabbed a microphone at a People's Liberation Army's 80th year ceremony on August 1 and called for the spiritual leader's return.(South China Morning Post, 13 September 2007)