Human rights action in Frankfurt (May 24)

On Saturday, several human rights organizations will protest against the Dragonboat Festival in Frankfurt. The Society for Threatened Peoples (STP), the Tibet Initiative Deutschland (TID), the association Freiheit für Hongkong (FfHK), and the World Uyghur Congress (WUC) are opposing the Chinese government’s attempt to use events such as the Dragonboat Festival to draw attention away from the Chinese government’s devastating human rights violations.

You are cordially invited to the protests in Frankfurt:

On Saturday, May 24, 2025, starting at 11 am on the banks of the Main in front of the University Hospital, Theodor-Stern-Kai, 60596 Frankfurt am Main.

In recent years, the Chinese government used town twinning and events such as the Dragonboat Festival to create the image of a friendly, harmonious, and cooperative China. This year, the Dragonboat race is once again organized by numerous representatives of the Chinese state and organizations close to the Chinese “United Front”. The festival is supported or co-organized by the Consulate General in Frankfurt, the Tourism Office of the People’s Republic of China, but also by organizations linked to China’s so-called “police overseas service stations.”

“The organizers in Frankfurt are promising ‘exciting competitions’ and an ‘extended cultural program with diverse highlights,’ while Tibetan and Uyghur children in China are forcibly separated from their parents and indoctrinated in compulsory boarding schools. The Chinese state is intimidating critical voices in Germany as well. The city of Frankfurt must not allow itself to become a backdrop for propaganda events,” criticized Hanno Schedler, STP expert on genocide prevention and the Responsibility to Protect.

Under Xi Jinping, head of state and party, China is increasingly relying on nationalism – focusing on a “greater China”-approach according to which ethnic and religious minority groups are to be brought into line. With its policy of forced assimilation of children from non-Chinese population groups, the Communist Party of China has expanded its catalogue of cruelties over the last few years. The aim is to alienate Tibetan, Uyghur, and Mongol children from their cultures, languages, traditions, and their own families. In Tibet and East Turkestan, even preschool children are separated from their parents and systematically indoctrinated in state-run boarding schools. Also, the civil society in Hong Kong is systematically criminalized.