US: Taiwanese, Tibetan students disrupt Chinese Ambassador Xie Feng's speech at Harvard

WASHINGTON: A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan Harvard students disrupted the speech of Chinese Ambassador to the United States Xie Feng at Harvard University on Saturday, accusing the country of human rights violations. The incident occurred during the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024, Central News Agency Taiwan reported on Sunday.

Four students, including two Taiwanese-Americans and two Tibetans, held up banners inside the conference hall where Xie was addressing the gathering. In a video provided by the "Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP," Taiwanese-American Harvard student Cosette Wu was seen holding a banner reading "China Lies, People Die."

Wu, who is also a co-director of the student organization, shouted at the Chinese ambassador Xie, accusing him of painting an illusion of a prosperous China while having "hands painted with blood."

She further stated, "You robbed Hong Kongers of the most fundamental freedom and devastated their democracy. Now in my country Taiwan, you sought to do the same," before being forcibly removed by an organizer from the Harvard Kennedy School's Greater China Society, Central News Agency Taiwan reported.

Local police intervened and admonished the organizer, and Xie's speech was delayed by 45 minutes due to the protest.

Meanwhile, similar protests, organized by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP and "Students for a Free Tibet," were also staged outside the conference hall on Saturday, CNA Taiwan reported.

Xie's speech was subsequently delayed for 45 minutes.

The protestors' press statement said Saturday's protest targeted the Chinese government for its human rights abuses and aggressions in Tibet, Hong Kong, East Turkestan, and Taiwan, and were aimed at Xie in particular.

Xie is responsible for turning Hong Kong into a dystopian state during the 2019 protests and for the enactment of the National Security Law, the statement said.

He has also made thinly veiled threats of war to intimidate Taiwan, and orchestrated propaganda trips to East Turkestan to whitewash the CCP's genocide against the Uyghurs," the statement added.

Later on, in an interview with the CNA Taiwan, Protester Wu said that Xie was the CCP's commissioner to Hong Kong during the 2019 protests and when the National Security Law was implemented.

"So this was a man who is directly in charge of overseeing the CCP's complete takeover of Hong Kong society and the destruction of their democracy," Wu said during a phone interview.

"And now in his role as the ambassador, he's making, like, thinly veiled threats of a military invasion of Taiwan," she said, adding that, as a Taiwanese, it was her duty to speak up.

Meanwhile, the protestors' press statement quoted a Tibetan student, who asked not to be named, saying that her family was forced to flee Tibet after "China massacred tens of thousands of Tibetans during the CCP's military invasion and colonization of my homeland."

"Today, in occupied Tibet, China is continuing the genocide of Tibet by ripping 80 percent of all Tibetan schoolchildren from their families and forcing them to attend colonial boarding schools where speaking Tibetan is forbidden," she said.

The unnamed co-president of the "Students for a Free Tibet" Boston chapter accused Xie of being an "advocate for the genocide" of Tibetans and said that it was her duty as a Tibetan Harvard student to show the world the truth. "The occupation must end. Tibet will be free."

CNA Taiwan reported that in a press release by the Chinese embassy in the US regarding Xie's Saturday speech, Xie warned Washington to stop "interfering with China's internal affairs."

"If the U.S. side keeps interfering with China's internal affairs and damaging China's interests on issues related to Taiwan, Hong Kong, Xinjiang, Xizang [Tibet] and the South China Sea, how could the two sides ever put a floor under the relationship, no matter how many guardrails there may be."

Xie also stressed that the "Taiwan question is the most important and sensitive issue in China-U.S. relations."

The so-called "Taiwan independence" is a dead end, and the one-China principle is a red line not to be crossed, he said.