Human rights campaign for China's persecuted artists begins Engage Tibetans, Uighurs and Mongolians in Germany's "Year of Chinese Culture 2012"!

Uyghurs, Tibetans and Mongolians must be included in the planning of the Year of Chinese Culture 2012 in Germany. This demand was underscored on Tuesday in a vigil before the Munich city hall, held by members of these ethnic groups living in exile in Germany. They were supported by the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP). This human rights organization has appealed to the Prime Ministers of the German Bundesländer (federal states) and the mayors of the 80 largest German cities to include information about the repression of culture and artists in China as part of the official events organized by the German and Chinese governments. "Every week more authors and artists are silenced by Chinese authorities. Germany must not remain silent on this point," was the appeal from the STP to the politicians.

As the opening event of their "Year of Chinese Culture 2012: Welcome cultural diversity – don't destroy it!" the STP in Munich launched a creative, participatory photo-campaign. To demonstrate solidarity with persecuted artists and authors in China, volunteer participants symbolically bound their mouths closed and then dropped an object on the floor. The STP photographed each of the participants, and will publish the photographs on the STP campaign site on Facebook. The participatory campaign should then be continued on the Internet. It is based on the critical photographic triptych by Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei, who let a thousand-year-old urn fall to the floor and break. After having been arrested in early April in China, Ai Weiwei has been released, but he is no longer permitted to speak publicly.

"The fate of Ai Weiwei is representative for dozens of other recently arrested Uighur, Tibetan, Mongolian and Chinese authors and artists," said Ulrich Delius of the STP's Asia section, urging: "The German authorities must not hide the human rights situation in the official celebrations of the Year of Chinese Culture 2012. The public has a right to be spared the piling on of cheap propaganda from the Communist party in China, and provided instead with a realistic image of the culture and the people's lives in China." For example, just one day in prison almost cost Tibetan author Pema Rinchen his life. The 25-year-old was arrested on 5 July 2011 and then – just 24 hours later – admitted to hospital with serious injuries, even though torture has been officially banned in China for more than 20 years.

Contemporary artistic creativity is subject to increasingly sharp censorship in China. But many historical cultural sites, too, of Tibetans, Mongolians and Uighurs are threatened with destruction or are already being systematically destroyed. Since spring of 2009, in spite of criticism from the European Parliament, officials ordered the bulldozing of more than 70 percent of the historically significant old town area in the Uighur town of Kashgar, arbitrarily destroying world cultural heritage.