(TibetanReview.net, Mar21’24) —Tibetans protesting against Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi clashed with police as they tried to get inside the Chinese embassy compound in Australia’s capital Canberra on Mar 20 afternoon, reported Daily Mail Australia Mar 20, citing video footage. Hundreds of mostly Tibetan demonstrators also gathered in front of the country’s parliament.
The footage of the embassy incident showed dozens of protesters holding Tibetan flags, chanting ‘free Tibet’ and other anti-Chinese government slogans.
Officers were forced to remove activists who tried to get inside the diplomatic compound as Mr Yi met with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong, the report said.
The Tibetans were stated to be part of a group from Hong Kong and Xinjiang as well, demonstrating against the Chinese Foreign Minister.
While bilateral issues dominated the discussions between the two sides, other matters raised were human rights concerns in Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong and the future of Taiwan, the report said.
Senator Wong has said the two sides acknowledged that both of them needed to manage their differences and focus on their shared interests.
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Elsewhere, on the same day, Tibetans from Canberra, Sydney, Perth and Melbourne, as well as several hundred people from Hong Kong, Xinjiang and other parts of China protested in front of Parliament House, said the Tibetan service of rfa.org Mar 21.
Raising Tibetan national flags and waving placards bearing messages like, “Free Tibet”, and “Long live His Holiness the Dalai Lama”, Tibetans and Tibet supporters urged Wong to put human rights above trade and hold Chinese leadership to account for its atrocities in Tibet, the report said.
The gathering was stated to have been addressed by Co-Chair of the Australian All-Party Parliamentary Group for Tibet and Greens Senator Janet Rice, calling on Wong, as well as the opposition’s shadow foreign minister Simon Birmingham, to urgently raise human rights concerns with Wang in their meetings.
“My message to both Penny Wong and Simon Birmingham is to put the issue of human rights in China and in Tibet absolutely top of the agenda. We cannot have normal relationships with China while the people of Tibet are being oppressed, persecuted, do not have religious freedom, are being taken off their lands, while kids are being sent off to Chinese-run boarding schools. Australia has to speak out and say this is not good enough.” Rice has said.
Independent Senator Lydia Thorpe has spoken of her empathy as an Aboriginal woman on the situation in Tibet. She has criticised the Australian government for treading around the issue of human rights and expressed her unwavering support for the Tibetan cause.
Other members of parliament who joined the protest to express their solidarity and support for Tibetans and other victims of the Communist Party of China have included Senators Dean Smith and Jordon Steel-John, as well as MP’s Andrew Wallace and David Gillespie.
Wang’s visit is the first by a senior Chinese leader since 2017, signalling a diplomatic softening in strained relations between the two countries that have clashed in recent years over human rights, trade and Covid-19.