Paris [France]: Demonstrators from Tibetans, Uyghurs, and the Vietnamese communities gathered at Paris’s Bastille Square for a candlelight vigil to protest against human rights violations and cultural genocide of ethnic groups by the Chinese government. The protest took place on Friday on the occasion of World Human Rights Day. The protestors were joined by French Senator Andre Gattolin, who is also Vice President of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), an international organisation comprising of parliamentarians from around the world who strongly believe that there is a need for a proactive and strategic approach to protect the democratic world from China’s attempts to distort the international legal order. During his speech, Andre Gattolin called for a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics 2022. A similar call was made by other speakers, who urged the French President to declare a diplomatic boycott by France too. The Chinese government has been accused of violating human rights in the Xinjiang region and Tibet. It has been ruling the region with an iron fist, imposing harsh rules, silencing dissent using force, and destroying local culture and tradition. People in the regions are repressed by local authorities who work in tandem with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The Chinese authorities in Tibet’s Lhasa have banned the teaching of the Tibetan language in the schools to implement President Xi Jinping’s idea of ‘Tibetan Buddhism with Socialist Character’. Further, China has stopped the Tibetan medium at school levels and made Mandarin the only language of instruction. Now the latest diktat bans the teaching of basic Tibetan in private Tibetan schools, which are run with public efforts during non-school hours or during winter holidays according to PRG’s Strategic Insight. Multiple human rights activists have raised voices against the rising case of detained Tibetans, closed trials, unknown charges and verdicts against the Tibetan religious minorities in China. But Beijing continues to bully its minorities not only within China but all over the world. Scores of reports about torture, re-education camps, and forced labour in the Xinjiang region in China have increased in frequency since 2017. The Chinese government systematically persecutes the Muslim Uyghur minority in Xinjiang, according to Amnesty International.
