Group criticizes chain for partnership with Chinese

The Gazette, page A3

Montreal, April 6, 1997

About 40 people protested yesterday afternoon outside the downtown Holdiay Inn Crowne Plaza and chanted "Holiday Inn, out of Tibet" and "Genocide is no holiday".

The demonstrators handed out pamphlets calling for a boycott of Holdiay Inn International, which is owned by Bass PLC, brewers of the internationally renowned Bass beer.

Numerous out-of-town junior hockey players, who were staying at the Sherbrooks St. W. hotel, seemed puzzled as they saw the protest upon emerging from the hotel. The protesters had formed two lines from the front door of the hotel to the sidewalk.

The boycott of the hotel chain has been called to demand that it withdrow from Tibet, and put an end to its partnership with the Chinese government in the ownershop of a hotel in Lhasa, the captial of Chinese-occupied Tibet.

Tibet was taken over in 1949 when Chinese troops invaded.

According to the Canada Tibet Committee, 75 percent of all foreign money entering Tibet goes through the hotel and helps fuel the repression of Tibetans by their occupiers.

One of the protesters, Tsering Wangyal, a 23 year old student from Bir, a large Tibetan settlement in India, explained that the Lhasa Holiday Inn is said to hire few people of Tibetan origin. The Tibetan community in Lhasa derives no economic benefit from the hotel, Wangyal added.

Wangyal is on a three-month student exchange in Quebec, and was passing through Montreal where there are about 60 people of Tibetan origin.

There were to be similar demonstations in Victoria, B.C. and at about 20 other Holiday Inns in North America, including New York City, Boston and Chicago.

Management of the downtown hotel referred questions to the chain's head office in Atlanta.

Kerri Wightman of Holiday Inn International said in a telephone interview that Holiday Inn is a franchise operation of individual owners, "and it is a little bit unfortunate that those hotels are being picketed."

"Hotels in Canada and the U.S. cannot do anything to change the situation at the Tibetan Holiday Inn", Whiteman added.

She said the firm's presence in Tibet does "bring benefits to the people in the local community".

Wightman explained that the firm "entered into a contractual relationship with the tourist association of Tibet several years ago and we must fulfill our obligations under that contract."

The contract will be reviewed when it expires within the next 12 months, she added.

photo: Older Tibetan woman with Tibetan flag

caption: Montreal's Tibetan community demonstates outside hotel