Published by: World Tibet Network News Saturday, October 18, 1997

by Sarah Jackson-Han

WASHINGTON, Oct 17 (AFP) - From Wall Street to Williamsburg, human rights groups, labor unions, exiled dissidents, and Tibetans are planning numerous anti-China protests during President Jiang Zemin's upcoming US tour.

"We're organizing our membership wherever he goes to demonstrate and make the message clear that people care about human rights," Amnesty International spokeswoman Christine Haenn said.

"What's unprecedented here is the incredible variation among the groups planning to take part -- that's exactly the message we need the US government and the Chinese government to hear," she said.

Amnesty International joins a broad coalition planning to punctuate every stop on Jiang's six-day tour, which will begin Oct. 26 in Honolulu and take him to Washington, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles.

The groups involved reflect Washington's broad agenda with Beijing too: the AFL-CIO labor group, the environmentalist Friends of the Earth and Sierra Club, and the International Campaign for Tibet, to name a few.

At the high point of Jiang's visit -- the first Sino-American summit since 1989, to be held at the White House Oct. 29 -- China's critics are planning a massive demonstration across the street in Lafayette Park.

Speakers at the noon rally are to include actor Richard Gere, musician Adam

Yauch of the US pop group "Beastie Boys," novelist Bette Bao Lord, and human rights activist Harry Wu.

"We expect thousands of people to take part," said Bhuchung Tsering, spokesman for the International Campaign for Tibet (ICT).

ICT has asked the 2,500 US-based Tibetans to organize regional protests and will hold what it's calling a "stateless dinner" alongside President Bill Clinton's formal state dinner for his Chinese guest.

One reason for the outpouring is that Jiang is seen as directly responsible for both the 1989 suppression of pro-democracy protestors around Tiananmen Square and subsequent quashing of dissent.

All the major figures in China's dissident movement are now exiled or jailed, said Xiao Qiang, executive director of the New York-based group Human Rights in China.

A Chinese advance team just in the United States to prepare for Jiang's visit was especially concerned about his planned trip to Boston and speech at Harvard University on Nov. 1, sources here said.

With busloads of Taiwan dissidents expected to disgorge on Harvard Square during Jiang's speech, his American hosts are also unsure what to expect. "It was their choice to visit Boston," said one senior official.

The noisy protests could hit China like a slap in the face and aggravate ever-simmering bilateral tensions, said Robert Manning, Asia fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations here.

"I'm really concerned that the administration has not prepared the American public for this," Manning said.

"You'll have the butcher of Beijing ringing the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, getting pelted by dissidents and liberals in Boston, and then going to out to Los Angeles where they've just released some anti-China movies," he said. "It could just widen the divide."

The Hollywood movie "Seven Years in Tibet" has meanwhile generated scores of calls to ICT from people eager to help its cause: Freedom for the Himalayan territory from the Chinese authorities who have controlled it since the 1950s.

More than 32,000 people tapped ICT's new World Wide Web site in the week since the movie opened, Tsering said, compared with 200 to 300 visitors a week to the the group's longstanding Web page.