Ask the students involved in Students For A Free Tibet and Milarepa who spent much of last spring boycotting against Holiday Inn Worldwide, a hotel chain that was boycotted

Proof of this is the result of the boycott from Students For A Free Tibet and Milarepa against Holiday Inn Worldwide.

Holiday Inn Worldwide, which experienced an international boycott of its hotel chain since 1993, announced that it will not renew its management contract in Tibet when it expires in October.

“The multi-year contract under which Holiday Inn Worldwide has managed the Holiday Inn Lhasa is due to expire this fall. Holiday Inn will not be renewing this agreement and will cease its management role at the property in October 1997,” Craig Smith, Holiday Inn’s vice president of corporate affairs, in a statement issued to the Milarepa Fund, said.

Iowa State’s Students For A Free Tibet group was active in the campaign throughout last year.

“We had a protest down at the West Des Moines Holiday Inn on April 5th and it rained on us … but we were still out there,” Ryan Bergman, president of ISU Students For A Free Tibet, said.

The group also set up informational booths and sent petitions with over 200 signatures to the parent company of Holiday Inn in Bass, Great Britain.

They also lobbied the athletic department to stop using the hotel chain for traveling teams.

The boycott, which was begun by the United Kingdom based Free Tibet Campaign, was announced in response to Holiday Inn’s direct partnership with the Chinese government in the management of Holiday Inn Lhasa.

There was so many things they were doing wrong and they were such a public company that we could affect them,” Bergman said.

Boycott organizers claim the Holiday Inn is discriminatory in its hiring practices, allows the Chinese government to tap phones and faxes at the Hotel, distributes Chinese government censored literature that misrepresents the nature of the occupation of Tibet, allows the Public Security Bureau to run prostitution at the Hotel, and is responsible for a large portion of the Chinese government’s total revenue in Tibet.

The Chinese occupation of Tibet since 1949 has resulted in the death of over 1 million Tibetans and the destruction of 6,000 monasteries. Bergman said those deaths have added up from genocide, population reduction, deaths in prison labor camps, shootings at protests and famines caused by China taking away food stocks.

The city of Berkeley recently passed legislation that prohibits it from doing business with corporations or people that conduct business in Tibet without permission from the Tibetan Government-in-Exile, which Bergman said was one of the final blows to Holiday Inn. He said other cities with high Tibetan populations were talking about passing similar legislation.

Bergman said the group is excited about the withdrawl. “We’re all pretty high on that,” he said.

Leda Nornang, Boycott coordinator of Students For A Free Tibet, said “I think their withdrawl sets a precedent for other corporations that are considering going into Tibet.”

They must realize that development in Tibet must benefit the local population, not further the Chinese government’s occupation.”

Bergman said the group has a selective purchasing campaign to support Tibet. They are also planning a mini-Tibetan freedom concert this fall and will put effort into promoting two upcoming movies about Tibet,