Activists target Chinese Embassy

A group of some 30 activists, politicians and celebrities quietly gathered in front of the Chinese Embassy in Prague Jan. 27, three days after the Chinese New Year, which saw the deaths of several anti-government protesters in the country's autonomous region of Tibet. With candles, speeches, music and banners, the embassy gathering called attention to the fates of China's prisoners of conscience, as well as the general state of human rights in the world's most populous nation.

Observed by a dozen security officers, the small group of activists remained undeterred even as it solicited little reaction from the embassy and skepticism from media.

"Today, I watched on Czech TV as the organizers were asked what we hoped to achieve by this," Lenka Pitronová, a local spokeswoman for Amnesty International, said at the event. "We have information from former political prisoners, right here in the Czech Republic, who say that when they were behind bars, one of their hopes was that someone somewhere was holding such events for them."

The protest was part of an international initiative to draw attention to the Chinese government's human rights transgressions against the banned religious movement Falun Gong, as well as the lawyers who represent its members. Corresponding events were held in nine other countries, including Slovakia, Hungary, Mexico and Australia.

"We came because of the Falun Gong," said Hoong, a Prague resident from Vietnam who attended the protest. "We heard they were being mistreated in China and how they are being used for organ trafficking, so we are here to support their rights."

Hours after the embassy demonstration, the Senate played host to an evening beneficiary concert for the Falun Gong and Gao Zhisheng, a human rights lawyer jailed for representing members of the movement.

"We lived through 40 years of totalitarianism here, and recall that tens of thousands in the West stood behind us then," said Martin Bursík, a former environment minister and Green Party leader. "As Czechoslovaks, we have experienced that this type of support is in fact encouraging, and it helps. The case of Gao Zhisheng is one example that symbolizes tens of thousands of such cases around the world."

The local tradition of raising awareness for human rights violations in China dates at least as far back as 1990, when then-President Václav Havel invited the Dalai Lama on one of the first state visits he received at Prague Castle. Since then, the issue has only gained in prominence. Each year, awareness campaigns for Chinese prisoners of conscience fill prominent Prague squares, often garnering support from national politicians as well as celebrities.

"Everyone here knows human rights are being violated in China but feel they have nothing to do with it," said activist Jiří Pokorný, who has been organizing such campaigns for the past eight years. "Focusing on specific cases and topics can do much more to inform the public, especially as that solidarity we used to have fades."

Markéta Hulpachová can be reached at
mhulpachova@praguepost.com