Tibetans Launch International "Boycott Made in China" Campaign
CTC (Victoria), December 4, 2002

Advocacy Groups Worldwide Vow Economic Pressure on China to Free Tibet

On Saturday, December 7, 2002, Tibetans and supporters will launch an international Boycott Made in China campaign designed to level economic pressure on the Chinese government to end its illegal occupation of Tibet. Simultaneous demonstrations in front of toy stores and shopping malls in cities across Canada, the United States, New Zealand, Europe and India will mark the beginning of long-term and coordinated efforts to urge people to stop buying goods made in China.

In Toronto, for example, Senator Con Di Nino, a long-time supporter of Tibet, will be present for the campaign launch in front of the downtown Eaton Centre.

Sales of “Made in China” products have given Beijing the financing to implement its massive population transfer of Chinese people into Tibet, to expand its all-pervasive and brutal apparatus of control and repression, to systematically undermine the Tibetan language, religion and way of life, and to maintain a vast army of occupation inside Tibet.

Even as many of us in the rest of the world go about celebrating our religious holidays, Catholic bishops, Protestant pastors, Buddhist monks and Falun Gong practitioners are being jailed, tortured and sometimes executed for their religious beliefs. The campaign seeks to make consumers aware that many of the holiday presents and Christmas decorations they buy are manufactured under horrendous conditions in the world’s largest system of forced labor camps, many of which are located in remote parts of Tibet.

A survivor of 19 years in Chinese prisons and labour camps, Harry Wu, author of Laogai: The Chinese Gulag, says, “Not only are Chinese products made by a disenfranchised labour force where trade unions do not exist, but millions of Chinese work in forced labour camps to produce the export goods that help sustain China’s economy and keep its ruthless, totalitarian leaders in power”.

The Boycott Made in China campaign represents a worldwide coalition of Tibetan and Chinese organizations, human rights and labour advocates. Campaign organizers believe that, more than any other force that could be brought to bear against China, the power of the informed individual consumer can provide the economic pressure to force China to allow Tibet and the Tibetans the rightful freedom they have long been denied.

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