Election posters with Tibetan flag cause China to frown in Denmark
DHARAMSALA, 28 Oct: A Danish election candidate’s posters of himself standing next to the Tibetan national flag has been allegedly “removed shortly after he put them up outside the Chinese Embassy.”
Thomas Rohden, a candidate in upcoming local elections has” said 10 election posters of himself standing next to the Tibetan flag were removed shortly after he put them up outside the Chinese Embassy in a suburb of the capital Copenhagen,” reported.
The candidate, a known critic of China had reported a theft of the posters, the report said and added that Rohden assumes the Chinese Embassy was behind it.
“I saw people coming out of the embassy, creating a bit of a fuss about it. Hours later, the posters were gone,” he was quoted as saying in the report.
Denmark’s Foreign Minister Jeppe Kofod has described the incident as “worrying” and that the administration now awaits a decision by the police before taking further action in the case.
“We must and will stand by our values and principles,” Kofod said.
Rohden has declared “the posters were meant as a protest of a 2012 partnership accord between Danish health authorities and the eastern Chinese province of Jiangsu,” and that on Tuesday, he hung new posters outside the embassy.
However, the report added that “public records show the deal is no longer active but has yet to be formally terminated.”
Meanwhile, China has described the posters as anti-China and called it “a deliberate attempt to interfere in China’s internal affairs.
“We express our strong indignation at this deliberate provocation,” read a statement issued by the Chinese embassy on its website.
The statement further declared that “Tibet is an inalienable part of China” and that “any attempt to separate it from China is bound to fail.”
“We firmly oppose any attempt to interfere in China’s internal affairs and to undermine its sovereignty and territorial integrity under the pretext of an election campaign or the so-called ‘freedom of speech,” it added.
