InterContinental hotels to face synchronised international Tibet demonstrations this week

NEW YORK, LONDON - Tibet campaigners will be coordinating protests on 5 November outside InterContinental hotels on at least four continents as part of the first global day of action against InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG). The event comes as Students for a Free Tibet (SFT) - the campaign group, which made its mark with high-profile Olympic protests in 2008 - joins UK-based Free Tibet in leading the worldwide campaign calling on IHG to pull out of a deal to run a 1,000+ room luxury hotel in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet. The ‘InterContinental Resort Lhasa Paradise’ is currently expected to open in 2014.

"InterContinental's plans to open a massive ‘luxury resort’ in Lhasa are not just offensive to Tibetans but a reputational nightmare for investors,” said Padma Dolma, Campaigns and Europe Director for Students for a Free Tibet. “China's flagrant humans rights abuses in Tibet were highlighted by several countries during the UN's review of China last week, yet InterContinental's executives want to continue with business as usual in Lhasa. Occupation is no vacation and as long as Tibetans live in fear of arrest, imprisonment and death for simply expressing their desire for freedom and the return of the Dalai Lama, Lhasa is no place for a UK-based company to open a luxury hotel.”

The protests, coordinated with the International Tibet Network, are timed to coincide with IHG’s release of its interim third quarter results on 5 November. The campaign has already sparked demonstrations outside InterContinental hotels in London, New York and Paris (1). On 5 November hotels in the Americas, Asia, Europe and Australasia will be targeted, with more to be confirmed. More details will be provided next week.

Tibet campaign groups maintain that the company’s presence and its decision to name the hotel the ‘Lhasa Paradise’ bolsters the Chinese government’s attempts to whitewash its gross human rights abuses throughout Tibet, and severe repression and surveillance in Lhasa in particular (4). Campaigners also believe that the hotel and its business facilities may be used by the authorities to discuss and implement further repression in Tibet.

“IHG’s intransigence and ignorance has exhausted the patience of Tibet supporters. Next week’s protests are a warning to InterContinental that the Tibet movement is united in condemning its decision to open this hotel and the campaign will only grow until IHG’s board sees sense and pulls the company out of Lhasa,” said Free Tibet director Eleanor Byrne-Rosengren. “An upscale international brand marketing the image of a Tibetan paradise to the world is exactly what China wants to see in the country it has occupied for 60 years. IHG’s investment may grease the wheels of its billion-dollar business in China but it’s also a sign that this company thinks it can do what it likes, where it likes.”

Sourced: TravelDailyNews