GENEVA (Reuters) - Chinese dissidents demonstrated Wednesday in Geneva and Lausanne, calling for Beijing to be condemned by the United Nations Human Rights Commission and to be refused the right to stage the 2008 Olympic Games.
The protesters, who included some of the best-known dissident leaders now resident in the West, also suggested that China should be kept out of the World Trade Organization, which it had hoped to join this year.
Wei Jingsheng, leader of the exiled Overseas Democracy Movement, told a news conference in Geneva the demonstrators' prime purpose was to support a U.S. resolution on China's rights record in the 53-member Commission.
A similar resolution has been rejected by the Commission every year for the past 10 years.
Wei, whose group also included representatives of Tibetan exiles and the Falun Gong spiritual sect, condemned by Beijing as an "evil cult", said China's human rights performance had deteriorated sharply in recent months.
Another dissenter, Wang Xizhe of the China Democracy Party, told the news conference, near the U.N.'s European headquarters, that many of his party's members had been arrested.
The Commission, made up of U.N. member states on a rotating basis, would violate its own principles if Beijing were not condemned, he declared.
CHINESE WORKERS "WILL SUFFER"
Wei said that if China were admitted to the World Trade Organization after 14 years of negotiation "the people who will suffer the most will be the Chinese workers ... who will lose their jobs."
But the second victim would be the 140-member WTO itself because the Chinese government "will change the rules." China should not be admitted to the body until it instituted political reform and improved its human rights record, he added.
From Geneva, the dissident leaders traveled to Lausanne where they staged a small protest outside the headquarters of the International Olympic Committee.
"If the Games are held in Beijing, it will hurt the Olympic Games themselves and will help the Chinese Communist Party," Wei told reporters following the demonstration.
Wang said the Games should be held "in a place where human rights are respected, where the political situation is stable and where peace has prevailed."
A banner in English waved by one protester read: "In Beijing the Olympic Games? Man, What a Shame!"
Six of the protesters were allowed into the building, despite a heavy police presence, and were received by IOC Secretary-General Francoise Zweifel and Director of National Cooperation Fekrou Kidane.
Zweifel told reporters that she and her colleague had listened to the dissenters' arguments and had promised to pass them on to outgoing IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch.
15:16 04-04-01
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