June 15, 2002

The leader of the world's most populous country began a four-day state visit to one of the world's smallest nations yesterday, and immediately must have wished he had not.

President Jiang Zemin of China was hounded by Falun Gong and forced to keep his schedule secret and switch hotels; all within 24 hours of his arrival in the normally tranquil Iceland.

The Government of Iceland has gone to extraordinary lengths to assuage one of the most powerful men to visit Reykjavik since Presidents Reagan and Gorbachev held their famous summit there in 1986.

It sent police officers to foreign airports to stop Falun Gong demonstrators reaching Iceland; issued Icelandair with passenger blacklists; and briefly detained scores of protesters who slipped through the net.

The authorities have acknowledged the existence of a blacklist of Falun Gong members. The Government said that it had banned the protesters because its police force was too small to cope with mass demonstrations.

While ministers defend their handling of this controversial official visit, their actions provoked a furious response in Iceland and beyond.

Some 550 Iceland citizens took out a full-page advertisement in the island's major national newspaper apologizing for the Government's incomprehensible actions and condemning China's human rights record.

Opposition leaders accused the Government of conduct bordering on the illegal and MPs are demanding a parliamentary investigation.

At Charles De Gaulle Airport in Paris, 30 Falun Gong [practitioners] went on hunger strike after being prevented from boarding an Icelandair flight.

"We had planned all along to protest against political oppression in China," Agust Agustsson, leader of the Young Social Democrats, said. "What we did not expect was that we would have to demonstrate against human rights breaches committed by the Icelandic Government."

[...]

Keeping secret the movements of a man with an entourage of at least 200 is not easy in a city with a population of barely 100,000 people but the authorities are trying.

The Hotel Radisson SAS Saga went to great lengths to prepare for President Jiang's arrival but he switched at the last minute to another hotel.

Press conferences and meetings with local dignitaries keep being rescheduled, presumably to avoid protests planned by Icelandic political movements, human rights organizations and those Falun Gong practitioners who managed to slip into the country and are now displaying their trademark physical exercises on Reykjavik's street corners and in its squares and parks.

[...]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-327382,00.html