David Cameron might raise the issue, Jeremy Corbyn says he will, and China hopes no one does. But at the very least the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, will face a vigorous public demonstration about human rights next week at the start of his state visit to the UK.
A number of groups are scheduled to demonstrate as Xi is driven down the Mall in central London to Buckingham Palace to meet the Queen. Among these will be exiled Tibetans, the Falun Gong religious group and a survivor of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.
On Thursday, the Chinese ambassador to the UK, Liu Xiaoming, said any lecture on rights would offend Xi and could harm Britain’s relations with China. His comments followed a promise from Corbyn’s spokesman that the Labour leader would raise the issue with Xi during Tuesday evening’s state banquet hosted by the Queen.
Amnesty International is hoping hundreds of people will join a protest about human rights on the Mall on Tuesday morning. Among them will be Shao Jiang, who took part in the 1989 mass student protests in Beijing, and was jailed when the army crushed the action and killed hundreds of people.
Also expected to protest are representatives of Falun Gong, the spiritual sect banned by China in 1999 as a cult and severely repressed ever since, as well as ethnic Uighurs from China’s far-western territory of Xinjiang, which has a vigorous independence movement. There is also expected to be a counter-demonstration by Chinese nationals.
The Free Tibet campaign will also protest against China’s long occupation of the Himalayan territory and subsequent rights abuses there.
More Tibetans would also protest outside the state banquet, said Alistair Currie from the Free Tibet campaign. He hailed Corbyn’s promise, saying: “It’s very welcome that it looks like someone is going to be raising human rights directly to Xi Jinping. The UK government says they raise issues in private, but we had a meeting with them earlier this week and they would not commit to anything that was going to happen.”
Barack Obama raised human rights and Tibet in a joint appearance with Xi during the Chinese president’s US visit last month, but it was not known what David Cameron would do. Currie said: “He usually says he ‘raised’ human rights, but raising human rights is not the same as challenging a government over human rights, bringing up specific cases and making the sort of public statement than human rights groups in Tibet and China expect to hear.”
