Human Rights Day
10 December 2004
This year
we set-up our usual Human Rights Day stand in
St Nicholas Square, Aberdeen. It attracted considerable public
interest, including an interesting discussion with a visiting
Chinese businessman, who was of the impression that "China had greatly
improved conditions in Tibet since 1949" -We politely pointed-out that
all (reliable) evidence is to the contrary, and that while Lhasa now
sports many brand-new buildings, these have been built at the expense
of the wanton destruction of many of the traditional sites of that
ancient capital. We asked if he'd seen anything of his own government's
fanatical campaign against FaIun Gong, and drew the parallel that if
that kind of totalitarianism went-on right in the Chinese heartland,
then there was no reason to assume that conditions for Tibetans, most
of whom are practising Buddhists, were any better. He reluctantly
agreed.
Our display's focal-point this year was the high-priority case of
Tenzin Deleg Rinpoche, and signatures were collected toward the
national petition for his release.
We'd like to thank the Press and Journal for covering the event;
the publicity is welcome and will make more Scottish people aware of
the facts surrounding the Chinese occupation of Tibet.
Something we hadn't anticipated was that this year we had people
asking if they could light a candle themselves in support of
Tenzin Deleg Rinpoche. Perhaps next time we'll expand on that idea, and
let stand-visitors light all the candles!