Roses are Red

If China is to take the world stage on New Year's Day in Pasadena, so will its authoritarian government's tragic record of human rights abuses.

What began in this newspaper as local outrage voiced over a Rose Parade float designed to celebrate the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing has quickly snowballed into an international campaign urging the Tournament of Roses Association and elected city officials to take a public stand for civil liberties in China.

On Monday, advocacy organizations and members of social groups that are suppressed by the Chinese government gathered at City Hall for a second time to call on Pasadena City Council members to officially advocate for improved conditions in China.

Meanwhile, three international humanitarian organizations — Reporters Without Borders, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch — have added their voices to those pressuring the Tournament and the council.

In a letter sent last week to Tournament President CL Keedy, Secretary General Robert Ménard of the Paris-based press freedoms group Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontiéres) urged the organization to refuse hosting a float until China releases its political prisoners, especially those associated with media.

“Mr. Chairman, it is not too late to get the Chinese [Olympic Committee] organizers, who are for the most part also senior political officials, to release prisoners of conscience, reform repressive laws and end censorship. It is time to add your voice to the international pressure and to say clearly to the Chinese authorities that you will not allow the Rose Parade to be associated to the Olympics and to have the celebrations marred by the human rights violations committed in China,” wrote Ménard, who described China as “by far the world's biggest prison for journalists, press-freedom activists, cyber-dissidents and Internet users,” where more than 100 media figures are being held without access to a court.

A similar letter was sent to Pasadena Mayor Bill Bogaard, who in May spoke at a Tournament ceremony announcing the float that was attended by Olympic Committee officials and members of the Chinese-language press.

Although they could not be reached to discuss the letter, Keedy and Tournament Chief Operating Officer Bill Flinn met last Wednesday with Jianzhong (John) Li, a Caltech laboratory technical aide who first raised concerns about the float based on the Chinese regime's persecutions of the Falun Gong movement, of which he is a member.

This week at City Hall, members of the Southern California-based Visual Artists Guild, the Los Angeles Friends of Tibet and other groups leveled criticism at Tournament officials and appealed to council members for action.

That pressure is likely to keep growing, as council members decided Monday at the urging of Councilman Chris Holden to officially discuss the matter in 90 days after a recommendation by the city's Human Relations Commission.

The meeting attracted reporters from television stations KTLA Channel 5 and KABC Channel 7,

KPCC-FM 89.3 and the Chinese Daily News.

Amnesty International Asia Advocacy Director T. Kumar told the Weekly his organization is now encouraging Pasadena council members to use their nearly decade-long sister city relationship with Xicheng, an administrative district of Beijing, to advocate for relaxation of human rights restrictions.

Amnesty's call comes after Li and other local practitioners of Falun Gong — a popular spiritual movement outlawed by China, which subjects its members to detention, beatings and other rights violations — brought the issue before the Pasadena City Council on June 25.

While Kumar said Amnesty cannot support the accuracy of all claims made by Falun Gong members regarding incidents of detention, torture and even murder at the hands of the state, he did decry the increasing use of arrest and detention without trial against many segments of the population for political reasons.

“The situation is extremely disturbing from a human rights perspective,” said Kumar, whose group believes hundreds of thousands of people have been forced into “Re-education through Labor” camps. Administrative detention without judicial oversight is in play in all parts of China and so commonplace that it would be fair to assume Pasadena's sister city is involved in the practice as well, he added.

“The best thing the Pasadena City Council can do is to request their sister city in China make a public statement that they will not use the Re-education through Labor system to imprison people without charge or trial. Amnesty International is urging the Pasadena City Council to do this,” said Kumar.

Councilman Victor Gordo has already suggested his colleagues take similar action. “We can say it's wrong, and we can ask our friends [in sister cities] to say the same thing. If they are our friends and believe as we do, then they should do as we do and denounce it,” he said of human rights abuse.

Sophie Richardson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch's Asia Division, joined Amnesty's call on City Council members to press for change. “Those people have an opportunity that others don't to raise questions directly with Chinese officials, and we'd like to see that put to good use. It's really incumbent on people who care about human rights to take advantage of the opportunities they have to raise these concerns,” said Richardson.

Human Rights Watch is currently running a special campaign monitoring issues surrounding the run-up to the Beijing Olympics, including forced evictions and an increase in censorship and imprisonment.

Neither Human Rights Watch nor Amnesty, however, have called for removing the Olympics from China, instead hoping that the global attention the Games are expected to receive will shine light on conditions there.

Li isn't so sure there should be a Beijing Olympics, but said he believes Tournament members now at least understand his concerns.

In June, Keedy and later Flinn told the Weekly the Tournament accepted the application for an Olympic-themed float as part of parade's theme, “Passport to the World's Celebrations,” and did not expect that decision to have political consequences.

“Festivals, like the Rose Parade, are celebrations of the human spirit and allow opportunities to bring people together from around the world,” reads a prepared statement by Keedy issued to the Weekly last Thursday. “The Olympics, which brings nations together, is the epitome of a global celebration — providing a worldwide spirit of cooperation, supporting athletes in peaceful competition.”

To Li, however, “It is not the Olympics without the Olympic spirit. It will be a shameful Olympics,” he said, also referring to the Tournament entry as the “Beijing Olympic Float of Shame.”

The Olympic-themed float is sponsored by the Avery Dennison Corp., which is headquartered on Orange Grove Boulevard less than a mile from the Tournament House and employs more than 10,000 people in factories it owns in China, and is co-sponsored by the Roundtable of Southern California Chinese-American organizations. Members of the Roundtable did not return calls or declined to comment on the float, the organization's membership and its purpose.

Laurence Dwyer, senior director of media relations at Avery Dennison, did not speak directly to human rights issues but defended the float.

“This is a float that celebrates the Olympics, which is a global event that virtually all nations participate in, and its stated goal is to help build a better world. That's why we're sponsoring this. It represents an opportunity for athletes to foster good sportsmanship and friendship between nations.”

The float, he added, “highlights our beliefs that when the nations of the world come together in peaceful competition, we all benefit.”

Human Rights Watch's Richardson cautions that appearances can be deceiving when it comes to the People's Republic of China.

“The people who are organizing the parade should be fully aware that the Chinese government uses this kind of opportunity not for just promoting the Olympics, but for real political propaganda purposes. [The float] will certainly be construed as not just support for the Olympics, but for the Chinese government's staging of it. I would want to think carefully about how this type of endorsement is going to be used by the Chinese government,” she said.

Los Angeles Friends of Tibet President Tseten Phanucharas, whose birthplace has been subject to widely publicized human rights abuses and cultural oppression under Chinese occupation, told council members Monday that she felt the Olympic-themed float is making a mockery not only of Olympic ideals, but also of Pasadena.

“It seems to me a city like Pasadena would not like the Rose Parade, their symbol of pride and joy, to be used as a propaganda tool for the communist government in Beijing,” she said.