Darfur activists plans protest during Beijing Olympics
March 20, 2008 (BEIJING) — Activists will demonstrate in Beijing during the Olympics to press China to help end bloodshed in Darfur, a group said Thursday, adding to the government’s public relations headaches as it tries to quell protests in Tibet.
The announcement came as two U.S.-based groups released a report that accused Beijing of blocking efforts to compel the Khartoum government to end fighting in Darfur.
“We are planning some actions during the games themselves in Beijing,” Dream for Darfur’s executive director, Jill Savitt, said in a conference call with reporters. Savitt said the group was keeping details secret “for fear we would not be able to pull off those events.”
Activists are calling on Beijing, a diplomatic ally of Sudan and buyer of its oil, to help end fighting in Darfur. They have been pressing Olympics sponsors to lobby Beijing for action or face pickets at their headquarters or other protests.
In their report, Dream for Darfur and Save Darfur rejected Beijing’s assertions that it has been trying to bring peace to the region.
They accused China, a permanent Security Council member, of blocking or weakening U.N. measures to compel Sudan to end the violence while supplying Khartoum with weapons.
“The actions of China, more than the actions of any other country besides Sudan, have facilitated the atrocities in Darfur,” the report said. “For the past five years, essentially all of China’s actions supported the government in Khartoum, thereby enabling the atrocities Khartoum committed.”
China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. But a spokesman last week denied that Beijing has violated the arms embargo. He rejected a report that said China provided 90% of Sudan’s small arms in 2004-06. He said Chinese supplied a small portion of Khartoum’s weapons.
More than 200,000 people have been killed in Darfur and about 2.5 million people displaced in five years of fighting between African rebels and government troops allied with Arab militia known as janjaweed.
China has invested in Sudan’s oil industry and buys two-thirds of its exports.
Beijing insists politics should be separate from the Summer Games, a prestige event that communist leaders hope will showcase China’s economic development and boost their standing at home.
But they face the threat of disruption from protests over Darfur, Tibet, China’s banned Falun Gong spiritual movement, press freedom and other sensitive issues.
Thursday’s report said China has become “more balanced in its approach” to Darfur recently, but said it still “has done much more to support Khartoum than to help the people of Darfur.”
Also Thursday, activists released a letter to the Coca-Cola Co., one of three sponsors of the Olympic torch relay, from a coalition of 153 Tibet groups asking it to press the International Olympic Committee to move the relay out of ethnic Tibetan areas. The letter also called on Coke to end its relay sponsorship.
“I am certain that you do not wish for Coca-Cola to be associated with brutality and bloodshed in Tibet,” said the letter, signed by Alison Reynolds, executive director of the Free Tibet Campaign.
(AP)