The Ilham Tohti Initiative joins the international campaign to call for a boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing with a mobile (see the video below) protest vehicle trailer in Munich. The trailer has an official licence plate and can be parked legally anywhere on any street. According to German traffic regulations, it can remain parked in the same parking spot for up to two weeks. We, therefore, have to move it to a new location every two weeks. Over the upcoming months, we will also be parking it across different sites of the city to raise more awareness in the public eye.
However, this is not the first time of such a demonstration. About seven years ago, a similar project was launched by parking the same trailer in front of the Consulate General of China in Munich. Of course, it provoked a swift complaint of the Consulate General, who filed a request with the Munich police department, citing security reasons.
The police department summoned me to discuss the matter and to inform me about their responsibilities to protect citizens’ democratic rights and the safety of foreign missions. At the police department, I was told that the street-side parking of the trailer in front of the Consulate General was legal, but that police officers would be checking what was inside the closed carriage. I replied that we stored our protest banners and posters in it and offered to show them the content. Accordingly, we arranged an appointment with the police to inspect the stored utensils in the trailer. As a result, the trailer was parked in the vicinity of the Consulate General for about five years before the offices were moved to another part of the city where on-site parking was not possible.
The extraordinary protest action and the hasty reaction of the Chinese Consulate General drew much media attention and was reported by “Süddeutsche Zeitung,” one of the most popular and widely read German daily newspapers, and by “Pogrom,” a published medium of the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV), an active human rights’ NGO in Germany.
The article was published in “Süddeutsche Zeitung” on 31.01.2014 entitled “Trouble on the Wheels,” introducing the event to its readers by asking: “What does it take to upset a superpower like China? Merely a car trailer and good timing. How Uyghur activists annoy the staff of the Chinese consulate in Munich…”
The title in “Pogrom” was: “David versus Goliath.” Here is a translation of the printed text: “Enver Can, the special representative of the World Uyghur Congress (WUC) to the European Parliament, is the proverbial David who has been messing with Goliath, in other words, with the Chinese Consulate General next to the Nymphenburg Palace grounds in Munich, for the past year. Since then, Enver Can has parked his white trailer either in front of or next to the Consulate General building. But his trailer is not an ordinary one. Its sides bear written messages in large letters, demanding for human rights for the Uyghurs and asking China to stop the oppression of the Uyghurs.”
We hope that with a combined effort of all of us, we can together action a boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing and that we will be able to stop the Olympic Games from taking place in China. For too long the Chinese government has committing crimes against humanity with its genocidal policy against the Uyghur people!