Protesters Expected During Obama's Riverside County Visit

Supporters of Tibetan liberation announced today they will stage protests to coincide with Chinese President Xi Jinping's meeting with President Barack Obama in Rancho Mirage later this week.

Hundreds of people are expected to attend rallies at Bob Hope and Gerald Ford drives on Friday and Saturday and "call on President Obama to take a stand for Tibet and pressure China to end their atrocities in Tibet," according to Students for a Free Tibet, one of the rally organizers. The others are Bay Area Friends of Tibet and the San Francisco Regional Tibetan Youth Congress.

The rallies will feature a large mask in Jinping's likeness "to highlight his failed policies in Tibet that (have) resulted in 44 more Tibetans, as young as 17 years old, to light themselves on fire for freedom," the groups said in a prepared statement.

More than 100 Tibetans have turned to self-immolation to protest China's 60-year occupation of the region, according to New York-based Students for a Free Tibet. According to another advocacy group, Free Tibet, an estimated 1 million Tibetans have died as a result of Chinese occupation through imprisonment, torture and executions.

"Since assuming leadership of the Chinese Communist Party in November 2012, Xi Jinping has overseen a chilling crackdown and mass disinformation campaign in Tibet," according to a statement issued by Students for a Free Tibet. "Chinese authorities have arrested and imprisoned dozens of Tibetans for alleged connections to the self-immolators." --City News Service