OTTAWA (AFP) — Some 200 protestors draped in Tibetan flags Thursday marched on Canada's parliament, waving "Free Tibet" placards and calling on China to abandon its bloody crackdown on Tibetan demonstrators.
They immediately got support from Canada's prime minister and some two dozen MPs and senators.
"We're rallying for human rights," Tibetan emigrant Wooeser Tenzin told AFP.
"Here in Canada we are free to speak out. Peaceful protest is the right of every Canadian. But when Tibetans try to speak out in their homeland, they are crushed by Chinese troops and the Chinese government," he said.
The boisterous crowd urged Ottawa to help Tibetans win freedom from Chinese rule, chanting "China out of Tibet," "Long live the Dalai Lama" and "No Olympics." Tenzin said Canada has a "moral obligation" to help them.
In a statement, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said that "Canada shares (their) concerns about what is happening in Tibet" and pressed China "to fully respect human rights and peaceful protest."
"Canada also calls on China to show restraint in dealing with this situation," Harper said.
"As his holiness the Dalai Lama told me when I met him and as he has been saying recently, his message is one of non-violence and reconciliation and I join him in that call."
Meanwhile, two dozen MPs and senators sent an open letter to China's ambassador in Ottawa, Lu Shumin, asking to be allowed to immediately travel to Tibet to assess the situation.
"The recent show of force, loss of life, and detention of peaceful protesters has been shocking. The expulsion of journalists from the region who could ensure impartial reporting is also deeply troubling," the group said.
"If authorities in Tibet are abiding by international standards they should have nothing to hide, and we and other international observers should be welcomed in," Senator Consiglio Di Nino, chair of the Parliamentary Friends of Tibet, said in a statement.
The group's three previous requests over the past year for Chinese entry visas were denied, he noted.
"The fear is that hundreds if not thousands of Tibetans are being rounded up beyond the prying eyes of the world and may face lengthy imprisonment and torture as acts of retribution," Di Nino said.
A week of protests against China's 57-year rule of Tibet erupted into full-scale rioting in Lhasa on Friday.
Demonstrations and attacks on government buildings have since spilled over into nearby Chinese provinces with sizeable ethnic Tibetan populations, according to Tibetan activists.
The unrest has shone a harsh spotlight on China's controversial rule of the Himalayan region and provoked whispers of possible Olympic boycotts and mounting calls for talks on Tibet's future.
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