Campaigners protest at InterContinental Park Lane over company’s paradise resort” in China-occupied Lhasa.
LONDON – Attendees at the British Hospitality & Tourism Summit 2013 in London on Tuesday were greeted by campaigners, highlighting InterContinental Hotels Group’s plan to open a luxury hotel in the capital of occupied Tibet. Despite “severe repression”, “Orwellian” surveillance and intense protests throughout Tibet, which China has occupied since 1950, the hotel will be named the Lhasa Paradise.
Campaigners from Free Tibet are leading an international boycott against InterContinental hotels and demanding that InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) withdraws from Tibet.
The summit was held at the InterContinental Park Lane and IHG CEO Richard Solomons was scheduled to speak at the event. Protesters unfurled a large banner reading ‘Intercontinental: Get out of Tibet’ and distributed leaflets carrying graphic images of human rights abuses in Tibet. At IHG’s Annual General meeting at the same hotel in May, campaigners also staged a ‘die-in’, briefly blocking the main entrance. The security presence outside the hotel on Tuesday was substantial, with guests and visitors forced to negotiate barriers placed by hotel staff.
Originally planned to open in 2012, the 1,100 room Lhasa hotel is now scheduled to open in 2014. IHG’s partner in the project is Sichuan-based Exhibition and Travel Group (ETG). ETG’s chairman Deng Hong has close links to the regime and, according to Chinese media, both he and ETG’s chief executive are being investigated for corruption.
The international boycott campaign against InterContinental Hotels Group is supported by more than 30 Tibet groups and the International Tibet Network. It is being spearheaded by Free Tibet, a UK-based international campaign group that stands for the right of Tibetans to determine their own future, for an end to the Chinese occupation of Tibet and for the fundamental human rights of Tibetans to be respected.
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