Read more at the Somerville Times
The crowd’s chants echoed down Packard Avenue in the brisk afternoon air on Saturday, March 13. Amplified sound waves shook the atmosphere on the Tufts University campus as over 100 protestors, including elected officials, organizers, students and supporters of the Free Tibet, East Turkestan, Hong Kong movements, made their grievances known.
The demonstration was held on the street in front of the Tufts University Confucius Institute, where participants called for University President Anthony Monaco to shut down the Chinese government-sponsored facility.
This was the thirteenth “Solidarity Saturday,” in which activists called for the closure of the Confucius Institute and say they will not stop until Tufts terminates its contract with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Over 600 letters have already been sent to President Monaco, the mayors of Somerville and Medford, as well as to the staff of U.S. Representative Ayanna Pressley, in order to raise awareness for the actions of the CCP and its vested interests in Tufts University.
“This demonstration is a struggle to kick out the Chinese Government from the Tufts University campus,” said Advocacy Officer for the Tibetan Association of Boston Olo Bayul. “The Confucius Institute is funded and arranged directly by the CCP, and we will be here every Saturday to let Anthony Monaco and the Tufts leadership know it is unacceptable for a totalitarian regime to be working openly in our backyard.”
According to Bayul, the Chinese Communist Party is guilty of many crimes against humanity including substantiated reports of the systematic torture, reap, cultural desecration, and genocide of three million Uyghurs in East Turkestan, with over a million currently being interned in concentration campus.