Neither the Chinese nor the Hungarian police should tackle me for raising the Tibetan flag

After visiting France and Serbia, Chinese President Xi Jinping will arrive in Hungary on Wednesday evening, but not everyone agrees with his superpower policies. A significant number of those who disagree are members of China's ethnic minorities, such as the Tibetans, who have been forced to assimilate through heavy-handed policies. Since 1950, there have been several failed insurrections against China in the region, with many Tibetans driven into exile.

Over the years, advocacy groups sympathetic to the Tibetan cause have been established across the globe. In Hungary, for instance, the Sambhala Tibet Centre for Helping Tibet is holding a multi-day demonstration complete with a tent in Budapest's Városháza Square during Xi Jinping's visit to Hungary.

Tibor Hendrey, the society's founding president told Telex on Wednesday that they originally "wanted to be on the route of the convoy to somehow confront the Chinese guest with the fact that many people in Hungary are aware of the situation in Tibet". In the end, they were not given permission to protest in a location where the presidential convoy would at least have been within eyeshot. They tried asking for permission to be in Dózsa György Square and Hess András Square, but this was the place they managed to get. Hendrey is pleased with this though, as many tourists and locals have expressed interest, because it is a busy area.

Since hardly anyone stopped by while we were there, we asked him how much he thought the subject moved the Hungarian public. "We've been doing our work for 30 years, and we've been pretty effective in informing people about the situation in Tibet," he said, adding that people are aware of the situation. Hendrey opposes having Chinese police officers come to Hungary. As he said, “things that are working against democracy should not be imported.”

"Neither the Chinese nor the Hungarian police should tackle me for standing on the sidewalk and raising the Tibetan flag".

On China's investments in Hungary, Hendrey said that economic and political relations are strong, and Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó even referred to the Chinese leadership as "friends", although calling China our friend "would be an exaggeration" because of its oppression of Tibetans.

He welcomed the economic agreements, but said that the situation in Tibet should also be addressed during the meetings. To this end, their organization has written letters to Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Minister of Foreign Affairs Péter Szijjártó and Interior Minister Sándor Pintér.

The Hungarian government's attitude towards China and Tibet is made more interesting because in 2008 Zoltán Balog, who was Minister of Human Resources at the time, proposed a law on taking into consideration Tibetan perspectives. In the end, nothing came of his proposal, even though it referenced Sándor Kőrösi Csoma (Hungarian philologist and orientalist, author of the first Tibetan-English dictionary and considered the founder of Tibetology) and the Hungarian events of 1956 in it. In a 2017 article, 444 recalled that during the 2008 visit of then Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang, Balog was waving a Tibetan flag on Kossuth Square, but a decade later he argued that the arrest of a pro-Tibet protester had been justified. That same year the Curia awarded Hendrey half a million forints including interest for a similar previous arrest.

From New York to downtown Budapest

Chemi Lhamo, an activist currently based in New York who came to Budapest to protest against Xi, told Telex that it used to be easier to secure a permit to protest in close proximity to Chinese delegations. Now, however, they will be far from the convoy, and if Xi doesn't see them, "how are we going to deliver our message to him about the struggle for a free Tibet, for democracy, for freedom?" she wondered. A Paris group managed to put up a big "Free Tibet" banner on a bridge so that Xi could see it, but even there, displaying the Tibetan flag, for example was not allowed by the authorities anywhere along the route, and a young female protestor was forced into a police van until the convoy had passed. "Even the French government is suppressing freedom of expression," she said.

"The dictator Xi Jinping has blood on his hands", he has been oppressing the Tibetan people for decades, and in recent years the situation has only become worse: the media is not allowed in, Tibetans are not allowed out or to return to their homeland, and Tibetan children are sent to boarding schools. She says it is a shame that Xi is being welcomed in Europe. Xi talks about it being a win-win relationship, but Chemi Lamo insists that "there is no win-win relationship with someone who is committing genocide".

“You will also be seeing tanks soon, but these will not be physical tanks. These tanks will silence the UN, and they will force people to keep quiet.”

– said the activist. She said that her impression of the Hungarian people has been positive: many are recognising the Tibetan flag, they know where it is on the map, and many have expressed their support for the cause. Nevertheless, she said, decision-makers "are placing profit before people". In the end we asked her if they were planning any other activities during Xi's stay, but she declined to comment.