NEW YORK (WPIX)—
Not everybody is happy with the city's plans to light up the top of the Empire State Building in red and yellow in order to honor the 60th anniversary of the People's Republic in China.Critics of the nation's communist government have planned a protest Wednesday in front of the New York landmark and are slated to begin picketing around 7 p.m. More than a dozen pro-Tibet protestors were spotted in the morning outside the building's Fifth Avenue entrance. They came bearing signs with slogans like, "Mao's Empire State Building."
A majority of the protestors said they don't understand why officials at the Empire State Building would want to associate itself with a regime that has occupied Tibet for the last five decades.
"It's a disgrace that the Empire State Building is giving this honor to the Chinese Communist Party, a regime directly responsible for the deaths of at least 30 million people in Tibet, East Turkestan and China," said Tenzin Dorjee, a Tibetan-American and Deputy Director of Students for a Free Tibet. "I think Americans will be outraged to see the most iconic building in the U.S. kowtowing before the totalitarian Chinese state."
In addition, among those seeing red are Congressman Anthony Weiner who said the lights should not be used to pay tribute to "a nation with a shameful history on human rights."
