{"id":3330,"date":"2017-01-18T22:45:07","date_gmt":"2017-01-18T22:45:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.iuhrdf.org\/en\/2017\/01\/18\/tibetans-and-uighurs-protest-geneva\/"},"modified":"2017-01-18T22:45:07","modified_gmt":"2017-01-18T22:45:07","slug":"tibetans-and-uighurs-protest-geneva","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/tibetans-and-uighurs-protest-geneva\/","title":{"rendered":"Tibetans and Uighurs protest in Geneva"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Around 150 Tibetans and Uighurs protested in front of the United Nations European headquarters in Geneva on Tuesday against a visit to Switzerland by Chinese President Xi Jinping.<\/p>\n<p>JAN 17, 2017 &#8211; 17:00<\/p>\n<p><b>Around 150 Tibetans and Uighurs protested in front of the United Nations European headquarters in Geneva on Tuesday against a visit to Switzerland by Chinese&nbsp;President Xi Jinping.<\/b><\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;Stop the genocide against Tibetans,&rdquo; people shouted in the Place des Nations square. They called for the Chinese president, who is on a week-long visit to Switzerland and the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos, to bring back &ldquo;Swiss democracy to Tibet and to China&rdquo;.<\/p>\n<p>On Sunday, Swiss police detained 32 Tibetans and Swiss nationals among a group of 400 protesting in Bern against the visit. Several people near a security zone set up for the state visit failed to comply with police instructions, Bern cantonal police said in a statement. Police also prevented a man from setting himself on fire, according to the statement. The man was taken care of by doctors.<\/p>\n<p>In 1999, during President Jiang Zemin&rsquo;s visit to Switzerland, Tibetan sympathisers unfurled &ldquo;Free Tibet&rdquo; banners in front of the Swiss parliament square. Their actions angered Jiang, who later told the Swiss government that they had &ldquo;lost a good friend&rdquo;.<\/p>\n<p>On Wednesday, Xi is due to continue his visit with a stop-over at the UN Palais des Nations complex in Geneva, where he is set to meet UN secretary-general Ant&oacute;nio Guterres and later visit the World Health Organization (WHO). A major security operation and police presence is being prepared until he leaves Switzerland on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>The Chinese president is due to give a speech at a special meeting at the UN on Wednesday afternoon but it remains invite-only and no press are allowed.<\/p>\n<p>The Chinese leader arrived in the Swiss capital for a gala dinner on Sunday afternoon. He held talks with Swiss officials, including President Doris Leuthard, on Monday.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p lang=\"fr\" dir=\"ltr\">Ouighours, Tib\u00e9tains et \u00e0 l&#39;\u00e9cart quelques Falun gong bravent le froid sur la place des Nations <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/XiJinping?src=hash\">#XiJinping<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/Akgife6mXQ\">pic.twitter.com\/Akgife6mXQ<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Burnand (@fredburnand) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/fredburnand\/status\/821348084215123970\">January 17, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p><strong>Davos speech<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>China and Switzerland forged a free-trade agreement in 2014 and Swiss companies count China among their most important markets. The two nations signed ten new bilateral agreements ranging from free trade to tourism.<\/p>\n<p>On Tuesday he travelled to the annual meeting of the WEF, a first for a Chinese president, where he gave a speech.<\/p>\n<p>In Davos, Xi warned countries against returning to protectionist trade policies, saying there would be no winners in a trade war.<\/p>\n<p>Likening protectionism to &ldquo;locking oneself in a dark room&rdquo; to protect from danger but also depriving the room of &ldquo;light and air&rdquo;, he told countries not to pursue their own interests at the expense of others.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;No one will emerge as a winner in a trade war,&rdquo; Xi told the WEF.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<address>\n<p>swissinfo.ch\/sb<\/p>\n<\/address>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Around 150 Tibetans and Uighurs protested in front of the United Nations European headquarters in Geneva on Tuesday against a visit to Switzerland by Chinese President Xi Jinping.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3329,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-3330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3330\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3330"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=3330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}