A rally to raise awareness about human-rights violations in China ended up demonstrating just how polarized Winnipeggers feel about the issue.

About 100 people showed up at the Legislature on May 9 to support the Global Human Rights Torch Relay, a grassroots campaign that's winding its way around the world in advance of this summer's Olympic Games in Beijing. However, the local event was repeatedly disrupted by a group of about 20 pro-China protesters who waved Chinese flags, sang and chanted slogans.

The campaign's goal is to draw attention to the actions of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the hopes of creating change. Representatives from several groups criticized the CCP for its support of oppressive regimes in Myanmar (also known as Burma) and Sudan, as well as for its systemic persecution of political dissidents, democracy activists, Tibetan Buddhists, and followers of Falun Gong, a Chinese spiritual practice that was banned by the CCP in 1999.

Allegations from the latter group are particularly disturbing. They claim that tens of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners have been arrested, imprisoned and killed so that their organs can be harvested and sold - accusations that were corroborated in a 2006 report co-authored by David Matas, a prominent local human-rights lawyer who spoke at the Winnipeg rally.

"Crimes against humanity are crimes against us all," Matas told the crowd. "These are matters that we must speak out against or else we cease to be human."

Similar rallies have been held in 37 countries since the Global Human Rights Torch Relay began in Greece last August, initiated by the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong. Matas has attended a number of them - both in North America and in Europe - and told Uptown that Winnipeg's was the first at which Chinese nationalists have attempted to shout down the speakers.

For the most part, however, cries of "Stop Lying!" and "Tell the Truth!" were ignored by those who spoke. Instead, they emphasized the need to show solidarity with people who are oppressed under the current CCP government.

"It's our responsibility, we who have the right of free speech, to stand up and speak for those who don't - those who are arrested, beaten, imprisoned, tortured and killed, simply because of their religion, their ethic background or their beliefs, or simply because they stand up and speak out against injustice, as we are doing here today," said Dorothy Kotler, on behalf of the Canadian Tibetan Buddhist Society of Manitoba.

"If we don't use our rights and freedoms to help bring human rights to others, then what's the use of having them?"