From: World Tibet Network News, Sunday - August 6, 1995

Forwarded by: Dan Hodel

Aug. 5, 1995 Tibetan Rights Campaign SEATTLE -- Seventy-five members of the Tibetan Rights Campaign and local chapters of Amnesty International demonstrated today outside the Washington State Convention and Trade Center in Seattle to protest a visit by 250 Chinese government officials that is being billed as a buying spree.

"Once again Seattle is rolling out the red carpet for the dictatorship that rules much of Asia the way Hitler once ruled much of Europe," said Ms. Kunzang Yuthok, Executive Director of the TRC, in a prepared statement. "Delegation members should be ashamed to show their faces in the free world, and Seattle's fellow travelers should be called to account for their complicity in the murder, torture and genocide that takes place in occupied Tibet." The visit comes at a time of heightened tensions between the U.S. and Beijing, following the arrest of U.S. citizen Harry Wu in China for his continuing work to unmask slave labor exports manufactured for the U.S. market and the sale of prisoner's organs for transplant operations.

Both Chinese and American security officials were in evidence during the two-hour demonstration, which attracted a lot of enthusiastic support from passers-by as it circled the convention facility. Local security officials tried to keep the demonstration away from a highly visible courtyard on the south side of the building without success. Demonstrators occupied the square and paraded around the area displaying Tibetan flags and signs urging China to leave Tibet and free Wu.

Both Wu and Tibet are of special concern to Amnesty International according to Gary Cadd, Chair of the Board of Directors of Amnesty International, Puget Sound. "Wu was traveling on a U.S. passport and a visa issued by the Chinese," Cadd noted. "His arrest is an affront to everyone who cherishes freedom and the protections which international law should afford to individuals and businesses alike. Wu is a hero of international stature and his arrest cannot be allowed to stand." The Chinese trade delegation will be in Seattle one more day and then will go to Chicago.