Up against a Great Wall

On the weekend that the new film "Seven Years in Tibet" puts Brad Pitt's pretty face up on screens, a protest at Kissimmee's Splendid China theme park hopes to shine a light on the uglier side of Asian struggles. At 10 a.m. on Sunday, Oct. 12, Citizens Against Communist Chinese Propaganda will stage a demonstration against Splendid China's alleged historical inaccuracies. An organization that has been staging protests at the park since its opening in 1993, CACCP will this time bring along Thubten Jigme Norbu, brother of the exiled Dalai Lama. Heading a group that is also set to include Taiwanese and Turkestani activists, Norbu will attempt to engage park officials in a dialogue about the misrepresentation and commercialization of Tibetan history on view within Splendid China's walls, including the identification of Tibetan tombs by names assigned by their Chinese captors. "This (Splendid China) is sometimes the only lesson schoolchildren get on Chinese anything," says Jack Churchward, coordinator of the CACCP. "And the problem is, they're giving us Communist propaganda right in our own backyard."