© REUTERS/PHILIPPE LAURENSON

Yesterday August 22, the French First Lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy met with the Dalai Lama (as announced …). What they discussed and how the puplic response is reported in today’s news.

Le Monde (France):

Cet entretien aura sûrement une tonalité politique alors que le dalaï-lama a dénoncé jeudi la poursuite de la répression chinoise au Tibet, dans un entretien au Monde. La Chine avait demandé mercredi à la France de manier “avec prudence” la question du Tibet.

[...]

L’envoi de Carla Bruni-Sarkozy à la rencontre du dalaï-lama a suscité de nombreuses critiques. Pour le Parti socialiste, il s’agit d’une “confusion des genres”. C’est une “mascarade”, renchérit Reporters sans frontières. “C’est insupportable. M^me Sarkozy n’a rien à faire dans cette histoire-là !”, a commenté Robert Ménard, son secrétaire général, lors d’une conférence de presse.

>> read full report

Telegraph (UK):

The Dalai Lama’s two-week visit to France was mostly focused on lectures about Buddhism, but he also seized the opportunity to express fears and grievances about Chinese policies in Tibet.

His interpreter told reporters the Dalai Lama had reiterated his concern that China was intensifying repression in Tibet during the Olympics to Mrs Bruni-Sarkozy and Mr Kouchner.

His comments are sensitive at a time when China is hosting a $43 billion Games partly aimed at impressing the rest of the world with its newfound status as a major power.

The question of Tibet came to the fore in March when Chinese forces put down protests there. Beijing came under pressure to stop the violence and engage in dialogue with the Dalai Lama.

Warned by the Chinese ambassador to France that there would be “serious consequences” if he met the Dalai Lama, Mr Sarkozy shot back that it was not for China to determine his agenda. But in the end he declined to meet the Buddhist exile.

>> read the full report

The Chinese Dictators show their true face:

BEIJING (AFP) — Beijing police said Thursday it had handed out 10-day detention terms to six foreigners believed by an overseas activist group to be pro-Tibet campaigners involved in Olympic protests this week.
SFT’s Statement on the Sentencing
These individuals were in Beijing to amplify Tibetan voices calling for freedom and human rights and the right of all people to freedom of expression. They are no more guilty of a crime than Tibetans or Chinese who speak out for justice and for the Chinese authorities to sentence them at all shows the government’s paranoia and intolerance of even the most peaceful challenges to its control.

>> read the whole story on freetibet2008.org

Human Rights Watch China reports on August 19th, 2008:

Two Beijing Residents Sentenced to Reeducation-Through-Labor After Applying for Permits to Demonstrate in Olympics “Protest Zones”

Human Rights in China has learned that Beijing petitioners Wu Dianyuan (吴殿元) and Wang Xiuying (王秀英) have been ordered to serve a one-year term of Reeducation-Through-Labor (RTL) after repeatedly applying for permits to hold demonstrations in the Beijing “protest zones” during the Olympics. Wu and Wang have both been actively petitioning the government since they were forcibly evicted from their homes in Beijing in 2001.

>> read the full report at www.hrichina.org

A Tibetan’s Protest in Beijing

Padma-Dolma Fielitz, a 21-year-old Tibetan woman from Germany, and a Canadian man protested near Tiananmen Square on August 10, 2008. They held the Tibetan national flag aloft before being accosted by Chinese security personnel. As Chinese security tried to wrest the flags away, Padma-Dolma was seen being dragged roughly across the ground.

>> read the whole article on http://www.studentsforafreetibet.org/

>> more inforamtions here http://freetibet2008.org/globalactions/tibetanprotest/

>> another article about this issue http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,571121,00.html (german)

Sarkozy meets the Dalai Lama … not but yes but no but yes but no … but Carla Bruni-Sarkozy yes!

AFP
August 10, 2008

PARIS (AFP) — The Dalai Lama kicks off Tuesday an 11-day visit to
France that threatened to spark a crisis between Paris and Beijing,
until President Nicolas Sarkozy quashed speculation he would meet the
Tibetan spiritual leader.

Planned more than two years ago, the Nobel peace laureate’s French
visit turned suddenly political after a Chinese crackdown on unrest
in Tibet in March that sparked international outrage in the run-up to
the Beijing Olympics.

Sarkozy’s initial threat to boycott the Olympic opening ceremony,
together with rowdy pro-Tibet protests during the passage of the
Olympic flame through Paris, fuelled a months-long diplomatic spat
with Beijing.

And a decision by the opposition-held Paris city hall to name the
73-year-old spiritual guide an honorary citizen further fanned tensions.

Though Sarkozy decided last month to attend Friday’s opening, noting
progress in talks between China and the Dalai Lama, he failed to
prevent a wave of protests targeting French commercial interests in China.

Speculation over a meeting with the Buddhist leader in France since
then continued to pour oil on the fire, with the Chinese ambassador
in Paris warning of “serious consequences” for bilateral relations.

The French leader’s office finally announced Wednesday that no
meeting would take place, saying it was the Dalai Lama’s decision.

The Dalai Lama’s representative in France Wangpo Bashi told AFP that
the “timing is not right”, saying a meeting during the Olympics
risked setting back talks between Tibetan and Chinese parties.

Instead, Sarkozy’s wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy — who under French law
has no official function — will attend the inauguration by Dalai
Lama of a temple in southern France on August 22.

On Wednesday, the Buddhist leader is scheduled to meet some 250
senators and deputies from the French parliamentary group on Tibet,
before holding talks with leaders of the French Tibetan community.

The rest of his August 12-23 stay will be devoted to religious
visits, in the Paris region and elsewhere, and a six-day teaching
cycle in the western city of Nantes.

“It is first and foremost a spiritual, religious visit,” said Bashi,
who heads the Tibet Bureau in Paris. “That is how it was always intended.”

France is home to an estimated 770,000 Buddhists, according to the
French Buddhist union, three quarter of them of Asian origin.

The Dalai Lama has visited France a dozen times since 1982, meeting
with city or government officials and once with the president, the
late Francois Mitterrand, in 1993.

France’s left-wing Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and junior
minister for human rights Rama Yade have both said they would be
willing to meet him, but no such plans have been announced.

Sarkozy has been accused at home of flip-flopping on the issue of the
Olympics and undermining France’s credibility in China.

Critics note that other Western leaders, including of the United
States, Canada, Australia, Germany and Britain have met the Dalai
Lama in the past two years without jeopardising their relations with Beijing.

Speaking from the Olympics opening ceremony, Sarkozy insisted Friday
the meeting “has merely been postponed”.

The Dalai Lama’s representative confirmed that a meeting would take
place before the end of the year.

China sent troops into Tibet in 1950 and officially “liberated” it
the following year. The Dalai Lama fled into exile in India in 1959
following a failed uprising against Chinese rule.

Beijing accuses the Dalai Lama of seeking independence for Tibet and
of fomenting unrest in the territory to sabotage the Olympic Games.

The spiritual leader insists he wants autonomy and religious freedom
rather than independence for Tibet, and has sent Beijing his “prayers
and best wishes” for the success of the Olympics.

Source: http://www.tibet.ca/en/newsroom/wtn/3626

Here is another reason to boycott the Olympics, and actually fight against the whole current professional sport system.

This is the story of Angel Heredia: Read about his story in the New York Times, another piece in The Times and here is a very interesting interview in German weekly Der Spiegel.

A new report by Amnesty international confirms that the Chinese authorities “failed to fulfil their own commitments to improve human rights”:

With the Olympics less than two weeks away, it is time to assess progress made by the Chinese authorities to improve human rights in line with their own commitments made in 2001. This report provides a final summary and updates developments in these four key areas which are: the continuing use of the death penalty; abusive forms of administrative detention; the arbitrary detention, imprisonment, ill-treatment and harassment of human rights defenders, including journalists and lawyers; and the censorship of the internet.

Read the complete report here (English, Spanish, Russian).

There will be no free internet for accredited journalists during their stay in Beijing as Reporters without Borders writes:

The Chinese authorities confirmed today that the 20,000 foreign journalists covering the Olympic Games will not have unrestricted access to the Internet during their stay. International Olympic Committee media chief Kevan Gosper nonetheless yesterday said the IOC’s key concern was to “ensure that the media are able to report on the games as they did in previous games.”

Reporters Without Borders condemns the cynicism of the Chinese authorities, who have yet again lied, and the IOC’s inability to prevent this situation because of its refusal to speak out for several years.

“Yet another broken promise!” the press freedom organisation said. “Coming just nine days before the opening ceremony, this is yet another provocation by the Chinese authorities. This situation increases our concern that there will be many cases of censorship during the games. We condemn the IOC’s failure to do anything about this, and we are more than sceptical about its ability to ‘ensure’ that the media are able to report freely.”

Sun Weide, the chief spokesman for the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG), today said the authorities would only guarantee “sufficient” Internet access for accredited media.

The Internet that foreign journalists in China can access is only relatively free. Yesterday, they were unable to access a new Amnesty International report entitled “The Olympic countdown – broken promises” or the websites for many foreign media, such as the BBC’s Chinese-language service, the German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle, the Hong Kong-based Apple Daily and the Taiwan-based Liberty Time. The Reporters Without Borders website was also inaccessible.

Last February, the IOC announced that athletes would be allowed to keep blogs during the games as they were “a legitimate form of personal expression and not a form of journalism” but it said the blogs would have to free of political content.

The Foreign Correspondents Club of China also condemns the measures of the Chinese authorities:

FCCC URGES LIFTING OF INTERNET CONTROLS
The Chinese government’s controls on the internet are contrary to the free reporting
environment promised by the hosts and contradict International Olympic Commission assurances that the press will be able to operate as at previous Games. Thousands of visiting journalists will now get to experience the censorship that reporters and other internet users in China have to put up with every day. The FCCC believes China should lift controls on the web in line with the standards of openness expected of an Olympic host.

© BAS / Tachydromos / CWS 2008