New Delhi
11 April 2008
President of Poitou-Charentes Region in France and French Socialist
candidate in the 2007 presidential election Segolene Royal said the world cannot remain
"indifferent" to the Tibetan unrest.
"China is an economic power but the international community cannot further its economic
interests in China at the cost of democracy and freedoms," Ms Royal on Friday told
reporters after a meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh here.
Public opinion can be seen in the protests and the world cannot remain indifferent to
what is happening in Tibet, she said.
President Nicolas Sarkozy of France has said the level of French participation in the
August 8 Olympic opening ceremony in Beijing would depend on whether China starts a
dialogue with the Dalai Lama.
"It is according to the resumption of this dialogue that I will determine the conditions of
our participation," Mr Sarkozy said a day after the Olympic torch relay in Paris was
greeted by pro-Tibet protests.
France will hold the rotating presidency of the 27-nation European Union in the second
half of this year, when the Olympics are scheduled to be held.
According to Ms Segolene Royal, who is expected to run for the leadership of her
Socialist Party later this year, said the Olympic Games is a "tool for a peaceful
worldwide movement" but sport inevitably will become entangled in politics if
transparency and freedom of expression are conspicuous by their absence, she said in
response to a question on the Beijing Olympic Games.
"Can we accept repression of a people or disregard for cultural expression and
democracy?" she shot back when queried further, adding politics will come into play
because the Olympic Games have a lot to do with "values".
Describing the Dalai Lama as "a Chinese citizen", Ms Royal said the spiritual leader of
the Tibetans is not for boycott of the Beijing Olympic Games. The Dalai Lama, she went
on to suggest, is not a separatist but he wants the cultural identity of the Tibetan
community to be respected and protected.
China, Ms Royal insisted, should not adopt repressive measures against the people of
Tibet, and appealed to China to respect the cultural identity of Tibet and engage in talks
with Tibetan people.
Ms Segolene Royal visited India from April 8 to 11 to reinforce co-development actions of
the Poitou-Charentes region of France with the Indian State of Tamil Nadu. She led a
delegation from the Poitou-Charentes region to observe at first hand the results of the co-
development and solidarity actions undertaken by this region in February 2005, in the
wake of the tsunami.
In the wake of the December 2004 tsunami, the Poitou-Charentes region had decided to
undertake a solidarity and co-development action in the areas of agriculture,
environment and sustainable development. It collaborated with two NGOs (ORCADES in
Poitiers and INDP in India) for this project, which had a two-fold aim of evaluating the
effectiveness of the actions being implemented for the past three years and sharing of
mutual experiences.
She visited a WIPRO unit at Chennai in Tamil Nadu. She travelled to Puducherry, which
was a French territory till 1954 and still counts almost 7000 French nationals. A great
deal of the work undertaken by the Poitou-Charentes region revolves around Puducherry.
While in Chennai, Ms Royal met with Prof Swaminathan, who is an agricultural scientist
of international renown and father of the Green Revolution.
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