STATEMENT OPPOSING ANTI-CHINA CAMPAIGN

For immediate release


April 7, 2008 Press contact:
Richard Becker, 415-377-6321
Bill Hackwell, 415-269-7917

STATEMENT OPPOSING ANTI-CHINA CAMPAIGN

We are opposed to the campaign of disinformation and demonization that is targeting the People’s Republic of China (PRC.) The timing of the campaign is linked to China’s hosting of the 2008 Summer Olympics. That the Olympics are taking place in China is of historic significance and great pride to all the country’s people. It was less than six decades ago that China emerged from a century of colonialist humiliation at the hands of the same big powers that are spearheading the China-bashing campaign today.

Washington is providing financial, political, diplomatic and propaganda support to the racist demonization effort, supposedly because of concern for “human rights.” This is the same government that is directly responsible for the death of one million Iraqis since 2003.

While one out of every three Iraqis have been killed, wounded or displaced since 2003 the US government is eager to have people in the US., especially students, protest any government other than their own. One pretext for the anti-China campaign is the fact that the PRC has trade relations with Sudan. The US wants to overthrow the government of oil-rich Sudan and replace it with a puppet. It has supported “rebel groups” who are prolonging the civil war. The people of the Sudan, who are suffering greatly, are cynically used as a fund raising vehicle by organizations that have raised tens of millions of dollars but have never spent a penny actually helping the people of Sudan, including those who live in the Darfur region.

Demonization campaigns against particular countries and their leaders are not just media exercises. Over the last two decades, such campaigns have preceded the invasions of Iraq and Panama, the bombing war against Yugoslavia, the coups in Haiti and attempted coup in Venezuela, and a threatened war against Iran. The pattern is clear and so too is the danger.

Regarding Tibet, for many centuries a region of China, the hand of Washington in the latest events is obvious for anyone who wants to see. For more than 50 years, the CIA and other U.S. government agencies have trained, funded, coordinated and supported the old feudal and repressive regime in Tibet represented by the Dalai Lama. The CIA front group the National Endowment for Democracy funds the International Campaign for Tibet, the Tibetan Youth Congress, the Tibetan People’s Uprising Movement and the Dalai Lama himself. The U.S. maintains close ties with the Tibetan “government-in-exile” in India, whose real aim is to break away a region making up a quarter of China’s territory. These U.S. actions constitute an effort to de-stabilize and dismember the Peoples Republic of China. The progress in education, women’s rights, employment and health care would be immediately eviscerated if the old serf-owning ruling elite, represented by the Dalai Lama, was brought back to power.

No one, least of all progressive people, should be misled about what is really going on. The real motivation for the anti-China campaign has nothing to do with human rights or liberation, and everything to do with an agenda of global domination.

We the undersigned call for an end to the disinformation and demonization campaign against China, and a halt to the attempts to boycott and disrupt the 2008 Olympics.

Initial Signers:

Ramsey Clark, former U.S. Attorney General
Muna Coobtee, Party for Socialism and Liberation
Tony Gonzales, American Indian Movement-West*
Richard Becker, Western Region Coordinator, ANSWER Coalition*
Dave Ewing, Co-Chair,U.S.-China Peoples Friendship Association,San Francisco
Willie Bartolome, Coordinator, Philippine Peasant Support Network (Pesante)-USA
Arturo P. Garcia, Philippine Immigrant Network for Empowerment
Bob Anderson, Stop the War Machine, Albuquerque, New Mexico*
Chuck Kaufman, Co-Coordinator, Nicaragua Network*
Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, Civil Rights Attorney
Peter Erlinder, Law Professor, former President of the National Lawyers Guild
Riva Enteen, member, National Lawyers Guild
Idriss Stelley Foundation
Education Not Incarceration, San Francisco Chapter
San Francisco Village Voice Community Radio
Mesha Monge Irizarry, San Francisco Bayview National Black Newspaper reporter*
Gilberto López y Rivas, Professor and Journalist
Beatrice Eisman, U.S.-Vietnam Friendship Association*
Mario Santos, National Coordinator,Alliance for a Just and Lasting Peace in the Philippines—USA
Jim Lafferty, Interim General Manager, KPFK 90.7 FM Pacifica Radio* and Executive Director, National Lawyers Guild, Los Angeles*
Ecumenical Fellowship for Justice and Peace-Los Angeles
Judi Cheng, New York City, NY
Eli Stephens, Left I on the News
Allen Cooper, Veterans for Peace, GI Rights Hotline*
Peing Baclig, Justice for Filipino American Veterans (JFAV)*
Jack Vergara, Echo Park Community Coalition (EPCC)*
Pons De Leon, First Quarter Storm Network (FQSN)-USA-

*Organizations for Identification Only