Protestors gathered on Packard Avenue last Saturday, calling for Tufts University to close the controversial Confucius Institute. — Photos by Joe Creason

By Joe Creason

The crowd’s chants echoed down Packard Avenue in the brisk afternoon air on Saturday, March 13. Amplified sound waves shook the atmosphere on the Tufts University campus as over 100 protestors, including elected officials, organizers, students and supporters of the Free Tibet, East Turkestan, Hong Kong movements, made their grievances known.

The demonstration was held on the street in front of the Tufts University Confucius Institute, where participants called for University President Anthony Monaco to shut down the Chinese government-sponsored facility.

This was the thirteenth “Solidarity Saturday,” in which activists called for the closure of the Confucius Institute and say they will not stop until Tufts terminates its contract with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Over 600 letters have already been sent to President Monaco, the mayors of Somerville and Medford, as well as to the staff of U.S. Representative Ayanna Pressley, in order to raise awareness for the actions of the CCP and its vested interests in Tufts University.

“This demonstration is a struggle to kick out the Chinese Government from the Tufts University campus,” said Advocacy Officer for the Tibetan Association of Boston Olo Bayul. “The Confucius Institute is funded and arranged directly by the CCP, and we will be here every Saturday to let Anthony Monaco and the Tufts leadership know it is unacceptable for a totalitarian regime to be working openly in our backyard.”

According to Bayul, the Chinese Communist Party is guilty of many crimes against humanity including substantiated reports of the systematic torture, reap, cultural desecration, and genocide of three million Uyghurs in East Turkestan, with over a million currently being interned in concentration campus.

“The Chinese Communist Party is also responsible for the deaths of over a million Tibetans since its illegal occupation of Tibet started in 1959. I am Tibetan. My parents fled Tibet by foot when they were six and eight years old, through the Himalayas, to escape persecution,” Bayul said. “We are very horrified that in a freedom loving place like in Somerville, in Medford and in America, that there is an arm of that very regime that haunted my parents, in our backyard at Tufts.”

Bayul says Confucius Institutes have been termed as soft power machines for the Chinese government that operate by disseminating state propaganda and suppresses academic freedom with the ultimate goal of influencing public opinion away from the image of the CCP as an oppressive regime.

“These protests are raising awareness for the human rights violations committed by the Chinese government and calling on Tufts to cut ties with the Chinese state-run Confucius Institute, just as UMass Boston and many other universities have done over the past several years,” said Somerville City Councilor Ben Ewen-Campen

The CCP contractually obligates universities who enter a partnership through Confucius Institutes. Not only do these contracts give unusual privileges to the Chinese government, but the CCP is responsible for the curriculum and hiring process of Confucius Institute faculty, according to Bayul.

Government sponsored Confucius Institutes have a national presence in American academia and there are examples around the country of various Confucius Institute directors being instructed to censor discussion on Tibet, the Uyghurs, Hong Kong or Taiwan as well as cancelling speakers like the 14th Dali Lama.

While 40 Confucius Institutes around the nation have been shut down due to tightening regulations from federal legislation, about 80 Confucius Institutes are left operating in the United States today.