Hundreds of protesters near the Sunnylands estate in Rancho Mirage, California, waited in vain for hours braving the 110-degreee heat on Friday to catch a glimpse of the Chinese President Xi Jinping on a two-day summit with the U.S. President Barack Obama.
It was not just anti-China Tibetans but Chinese activists and a large number of Falun Gong practitioners, a religion outlawed in China and Taiwanese and Vietnamese immigrants who were sitting in line waiting for the Chinese president to surprise him with slogans of "free Tibet" and "free China."
Vietnamese immigrants said that they were protesting China's treatment of Vietnamese fishermen while the Chinese activists and Tibetan protesters were urging the president to put an end to human rights violations by the Chinese communist party in Mainland China and Tibet.
Sources told Headlines & Global News that they were planning to surprise the Chinese president elsewhere ; maybe near the Chinese president's hotel in Indian Wells on Saturday.
Protesters said that they would like to see Obama press the Chinese president over human rights violations in the country.
"We would like (Obama) to consider human rights in his conversations with President Xi and put that on the table," Vicky Jiang, a Falun Gong Practitioner told the media.
Earlier this week, the White House had signaled that the human rights issue in China would be one of areas that the U.S. president would be pushing for.
"Human rights is an important part of the dialogue whenever we meet with Chinese leaders," said the White House National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden.
However, when media asked if the president would raise specific issues like the case of imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, the spokeswoman said that "given the sensitivities involved, we don't discuss our handling of specific cases."
