Conversation with:
– Martin Bursik, former environment minister, the Czech Republic, Chair of Czechs Support Tibet
– Anders Hojmark Andersen, Chair, Tibet Committee Denmark
– Shao Jiang, scholar, Tiananmen Square survivor
Hosted by Kate Saunder, FNVA
In today’s podcast, we’re going to be talking about what happens when China seeks to
bully and influence European democracies – by attempting to prevent peaceful protests
against the Chinese Communist Party.
As oppression has intensified in the PRC, the visits of Communist Party leaders to the
West have naturally become a focus of peaceful protest. Tibetans, Uyghurs, Hong
Kongers, Falun Gong devotees and many Chinese living in countries where they are free
to protest have sought to express their anguish and to press for change and an end to
killings, disappearances and torture in China.
But in recent years there has been a disturbing trend. Police taking away people’s Tibetan
flags, and parking white vans in front of protesters to block them from honoured Chinese
guests. Chinese people seizing Tibetan flags from demonstrators and throwing them into
the river. In London, a Tiananmen Square protester standing in the street with placards
being violently arrested before Xi Jinping’s car turned the corner, and two Tibetan
women taken into custody and their computers seized from their homes in the middle of
the night.
Our three guests today have direct experience of these bullying tactics and how Western
police forces colluded with them. And they decided to fight back, achieving significant
victories in holding both the CCP and their own governments and security services to
account.
This has taken years of work. In Denmark alone, two official Tibet Commissions ruled on
the treatment of protesters during visits by Chinese leaders including Hu Jintao from
1995-2018 as well as the specific period of 2012-2014. It was only revealed in 2021 as a
result that the Danish government pressured the police to be heavy handed with protesters
during official visits of Chinese officials in Denmark.
We’re delighted to welcome Shao Jiang in London, Martin Bursik in Prague and Anders
Hojmark Andersen in Copenhagen. I think this is the first time you’ve all spoken
together about your exceptional and indeed historic work in defending our freedoms in
this way – and sending an important message both to China and to our own governments.
Podcast details
“In the end, we hope that this sad case of a Danish kowtow to China will help to
highlight how the Chinese authorities pressure other countries into submission in order
to hide their crimes in Tibet – and how it can be fought.”
– Anders Hojmark Andersen, Chair of the Tibet Committee in Denmark
This podcast will take the temperature of China’s influence on European democracies
after a series of shocking incidents in capitals including London, Prague and Copenhagen
when police and the authorities appeared to collude with Chinese Communist Party
objectives to prevent and block peaceful protests by Tibet activists.
The protests coincided with major state visits by Chinese leaders – previous leaders Jiang
Zemin and Hu Jintao, and current Party Secretary Xi Jinping.
Police subject to Chinese interference in Copenhagen
In Copenhagen, it was revealed in 2021 that the Danish government pressured the police
to be heavy handed with protesters during official visits of Chinese officials in Denmark
(https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/short_news/authorities-accused-of-pressuring-
copenhagen-police-over-china-critical-protests/)
The Tibet Commission criticised Denmark’s foreign ministry and security and
Intelligence service (Politiets Efterretningstjeneste, PET) for pressuring the police, which
acted unlawfully against protesters critical of China.
The foreign ministry was “very accommodating to Chinese wishes that visible anti-China
demonstrations and expressions of opinion should be avoided during official visits from
China, and was willing to go to great lengths to maintain good relations,” the
Commission wrote in its report.
The ministry passed on Chinese requests to the PET and, in some cases, directly to the
Copenhagen Police, the report also reads.
The commission also stated that the ministry’s handling of Chinese visits to Denmark
was characterised by an “administrative culture in which the concern to avoid offending
Chinese visitors was placed above the Constitution and the European Convention on
Human Rights.”
“This administrative culture was also known at management level in the ministry of
foreign affairs”, the commission stated.
The report continues that the actions of the police were clearly illegal.
In 2018, Copenhagen police had finally admitted that they had made “serious mistakes”
by clamping down on peaceful demonstrations in favour of Tibet and human rights in
China during a state visit to Denmark by President Hu Jintao in June 2012 and a visit by
CPPCC Chairman Yu Zhengsheng in June 2013.
The head of Copenhagen Police, Ms. Anne Tønnes, stated in a press release on 18 April
that the police force had taken note of the conclusions by a Tibet Commission formed by
the Minister of Justice which in December 2017 – after two years of investigations –
concluded that the police had issued “clearly illegal orders” that led to a series of “clamp
downs on protesters, violating their constitutional and convention-based rights of
expression and assembly”.
Police actions ruled ‘unlawful’ in Prague after Xi visit
In Prague, during the state visit of the Chinese president Xi Jinping in 2016, over
several hundred Czech pro-justice and Tibet supporters rallied in Prague, waving
Tibetan national flags and chanting slogans including “Freedom for Tibet”.
Despite the announcement of the public event in protest against Xi Jinping’s visits
within the statutory deadline, the Czech police closed Hradčany Square citing
“traffic regulations”. The demonstrators were confronted by Chinese, including a
Chinese couple who snatched the Tibetan National flag from a Czech woman and
threw it into a nearby Vltava river.
In search of justice for the “shameful” response by Czech authorities, the
organisers of the peaceful demonstration – Martin Bursik, Katerina Bursik Jacques,
Tomas Pikola, and Katerina Kudlackova filed a lawsuit on 29th March 2016. The
case was initially discarded by the Czech lower court and brought up to the
municipal court.
In a historic win, the Czech court ruled in favour of democratic rights and
announced the Czech police’s response as “unlawful”.
Activists arrested in London and computers seized after peaceful protest during Xi visit
These successful actions over a period of several years followed an earlier victory by
Tibet campaigners in 2000. The treatment of demonstrators by the police during a
controversial state visit of the Chinese president, Jiang Zemin, in 1999 was unlawful, the
Metropolitan Police force admitted in the high court.
The police took away Tibetan flags and pro-democracy banners from protesters but left
Chinese flags untouched.
Lawyers for the Free Tibet Campaign, seeking judicial review, argued that the police's
handling of the protests in the Mall, widely criticised by opposition parties, contravened
the common law right to peaceful protest and articles 10, 11 and 14 of the European
convention on human rights, which deal with freedom of expression, freedom of peaceful
assembly, and discrimination.
The Free Tibet Campaign said the Met had been forced into a humiliating climbdown
after it agreed, before Mr.Justice Burton, that “it was unlawful for individual officers to
remove banners and flags from people solely on the basis that they were protesting
against the Chinese regime on October 19”.
The force also agreed to a carefully worded declaration that “it would be unlawful to
position police vans in front of the protesters if the reason for doing so was to suppress
free speech”.
The outcome of a visit by Xi Jinping to London in 2015, when a Chinese dissident Shao
Jiang and two Tibetan women were detained and their computers seized, was not quite so
clear cut.
Shao Jiang, a Tiananmen Square survivor who fled China and was granted political
asylum, was arrested in London in October 2015 during a state visit by President Xi
Jinping.
Video footage shows Shao holding two A4 sheets of paper, one saying “End Autocracy”
and the other saying “Democracy Now” before being aggressively detained by officers.
After being taken to a local police station for a breach of the peace Shao Jiang was
subsequently arrested for conspiracy to commit a section 5 public order act offence. This
is a more serious charge that then enabled officers to search his London home, seizing
computers which Shao suspects may have been given to Chinese authorities before they
were returned to him.
Police watchdog investigators then found evidence that the Met’s treatment of Shao, one
of the last protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989, was influenced by pressure from
Beijing to ensure Xi was not “embarrassed” by protests during his visit.
Following Chinese pressure, documents show UK government officials, understood to be
from the Home Office, also made “unusual requests” to the police about managing the
state visit, an intervention that one officer described as “unprecedented”.
Investigators from the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) found proof that
demands from Chinese officials, including its security service, may have informed the
decision to arrest Shao for conspiracy. “There is evidence to indicate that these requests,
together with their consideration of the ongoing risk to the CSV [Chinese state visit] and
to Shao’s safety, thereby influenced the decision to arrest Shao for conspiracy,” stated an
IPOC report.
In a highly unusual intervention, the behavior of the Chinese delegation was even
described by the Queen as ‘very rude”. (Video: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-
news/video/2016/may/11/very-rude-queen-unguarded-comments-chinese-officials-uk-
visit-video)
During a garden party at Buckingham Palace, a pool cameraman working on behalf of
British broadcasters filmed the Queen discussing Xi’s trip with Metropolitan police
commander Lucy D’Orsi.
When D’Orsi was introduced as the officer responsible for security during the visit, the
Queen was heard to remark: “Oh, bad luck.”
Later, the Queen told her guest: “They were very rude to the ambassador” – referring
to Barbara Woodward, Britain’s first female ambassador to China.
D’Orsi complained to the Queen that Xi’s visit had been “quite a testing time for me” and
claimed that at one point Chinese officials “walked out” on both her and the British ambassador.
