The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) held its 73rd National Day on Oct. 1. Meanwhile, protesters in California and around the world rallied against the CCP, citing its long history of violence, human rights violations, and totalitarianism.
Groups in northern California held two rallies, one in Berkeley and one in San Francisco.
In the morning, protesters went to the University of California Berkeley, where the Consulate General of the People’s Republic of China in San Francisco was scheduled to speak. They delivered an open letter to the university, stating that allowing the Consulate General on the campus will “contribute to the whitewashing of crimes committed by the CCP.”
In San Francisco in the afternoon, representatives from a number of different communities and countries—including Tibet, Vietnam, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Taiwan, and more—could be seen in front of the San Francisco Chinese Consulate. Speakers denounced the communist regime for its human rights abuses and the disasters it has caused around the world.
“Don’t listen to the communists; let’s watch what they do,” Jeff Doan, a representative from San Francisco’s Vietnamese community, said over the microphone. “As long as communist China remains there, the world will suffer.”
“So today we are here with freedom-loving people around the world to fight against the evil China empire and to fight for the freedom of all the nations occupied by China,” Bob Freeman from the Far East Freedom Youth League said to the crowd.
In between speakers, there were chants such as “Stop the occupation; stop the genocide!” Protesters would also say the name of a country that is occupied or heavily influenced by the CCP and then call “China out now!”
“Nearly 1 million Tibetan children have been forcefully taken away from their parents, forcing them to live in a colonial boarding school and cutting them off from their families, language, and religion,” said Lobsang Chodon in a speech.
Chodon is a representative from the San Francisco Regional Tibetan Youth Congress and also spoke at the earlier protest in Berkeley. The Tibetan Youth Congress was founded 52 years ago on Oct. 7.
Some protesters wore masks and sunglasses to hide their identities to protect their family members who are still living under CCP rule. The regime has been known to harass family members of people who speak out overseas.
“I urge the U.S. government and all the countries around the world to seek compensation from China. That’s number one. Number two, [the] Communist Party is the evil that causes all the crises here. Someone needs to take them down and take them out,” a protester whose face was hidden with a hat, sunglasses, and mask said at the microphone.
Ken Chan, a member of the Northern California Hong Kong Club, said in an interview that people in Hong Kong have recently been arrested for their social media posts.
“You can imagine this thing only happened in mainland China a couple of years ago. Now it’s happening in Hong Kong,” Chan told NTD, a sister media of The Epoch Times.
Valeria Samson was a foreign student in Beijing at the time of the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989. She was arrested and detained at one point during that time and realized that it was only her American citizenship that kept her from experiencing “the full wrath of the CCP.”
She comes to the protests in San Francisco every year because she sees that things keep getting worse.
“It’s totalitarianism. It’s on the rise around the world, and it’s terrifying. It sounds as though we have not learned from the lessons of the past,” Samson told NTD. “We want to live in peace. We don’t want these threats continuing year by year, taking away rights, drip by drip, like a wound that keeps bleeding and you can’t stop it. Pretty soon there’ll be no more blood left.”