10/01/2020

Hans-Peter Friedrich releases a video on the 71st anniversary of the People's Republic of China

Former Minister of the Interior spreads birthday propaganda (Press Release)

Today, the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) once again criticized the fact that German politicians are spreading propaganda messages of the Chinese government. "Hans-Peter Friedrich, Head of the 'China Bridge', congratulated the People's Republic of China on its 71st birthday in a shamelessly ingratiating video – in which he unquestioningly repeats Beijing's propaganda messages," stated Hanno Schedler, STP expert on genocide prevention and the Responsibility to Protect. "For example, Friedrich repeated the Communist Party's claim that it helped millions of people in China out of poverty – although it was the people themselves who worked their way out of poverty. Clearly, Friedrich does not care about the fact that it was the Communist Party that launched absurd campaigns such as the 'Great Leap Forward', in which up to 45 million people died. Videos like this will be celebrated at the Chinese embassy in Berlin – as the Chinese state media can present another Western politician who is willing to whitewash the crimes of their government.

In the video, Friedrich emphasizes that China has a strong position on the world stage. "Of course, Beijing's new best friend does not mention the fact that China's government has been undermining the international human rights system for years in order to ward off criticism regarding the internment of 1.5 million Uyghur and Kazakh Muslims, the attempts to wipe out Tibetan Buddhism, or the terror against human rights activists," Schedler emphasized. "The fact that a former German minister shows so much gratitude toward a totalitarian system is testimony to the efforts of the CP to penetrate Western democracies.

The China Bridge describes itself as independent of the state institutions in Germany and China. Today, the STP demonstrated in front of the Chinese Embassy in Berlin – together with the human rights organizations Tibet Initiative Germany, the International Campaign for Tibet, the Association of Tibetans in Germany, the World Mongolian Cultural Center, the Ilham Tohti Institute, the World Uyghur Congress, the Association of People from Hong Kong in Germany, Germany Stands With Hong Kong, We for Hong Kong, and Sino Euro Voices – for an end to the oppression of ethnic and religious minorities in China.