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From a Tibetan at WSSD - South Africa
[WTN-L World Tibet Network News. Published by The Canada Tibet Committee. Issue ID: 02/08/28; August 28, 2002.]
The Star
Wednesday, August 28, 2002
The first WSSD poster I saw at the Johannesburg airport was a Hewlett-Packard poster which portrayed a happy Tibetan woman using a computer.
Being Tibetan myself, and given that we we are not only oppressed and silenced in our own country but also excluded from the official WSSD process by China and the UN member states, I am appalled by the ironic use of Tibetan faces (there are many other posters like these scattered all over Johannesburg showing Tibetan monks huddled over HP computers) to glorify the WSSD process.
Considering the fact that HP's public relations representatives at the Umbuntu Village does not know about about the military occupation of Tibet and that Tibetan NGOs were specifically targeted and denied accreditation to the WSSD by China and the Un, one must wonder about the message HP is trying to convey through these posters. (Additional reporting by David Clarke)