Four Tibetan Independence Activists Detained After Dramatic Banner Hang

Contacts: Lhadon Tethong, Executive Director, and Kate Woznow, Campaigns Director
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***Photos and video footage are available at: http://freetibet2008.org/mediacenter/updates/birdsnest/

Beijing– Four Tibet activists from Britain and the United States were detained in Beijing today after unfurling Tibetan flags and two 140-square-foot banners outside the Olympic stadium. The first read, “One World, One Dream: Free Tibet” in English, and the second read, “Tibet Will Be Free” in English and “Free Tibet” in Chinese. The dramatic action took place hours before the Olympic Torch arrives in Tiananmen Square, and two days before the Olympics opening ceremony takes place at the stadium. The activists were detained by Chinese authorities after displaying their message for nearly an hour; their current whereabouts are unknown.

Tibetans and their supporters worldwide condemn the Chinese government’s attempt to use the 2008 Games to cover up its occupation of Tibet and its violent and ongoing crackdown on Tibetans struggling for their basic rights and freedoms.

“For years, the Chinese government has tried to use the Olympics to legitimize its illegal occupation of Tibet,” said Lhadon Tethong, Executive Director of Students for a Free Tibet. “At this very moment, Tibetans are facing the most severe and violent repression they have seen in decades at the hands of the Chinese government, and we have taken nonviolent action at this critical time to draw the world’s attention to the crisis gripping Tibet.”

“Days before the Olympic Games begin, and as all eyes turn to China, we appeal to the world to remember that millions of Tibetans are crying out for human rights and freedom,” said Tenzin Dorjee, Deputy Director of Students for a Free Tibet. “As the Chinese leadership prepares its display of grandeur and power in Beijing, trying to convince the world of its new tolerance and openness, it is waging a ruthless campaign of repression inside Tibet.”

Mr. Dorjee continued, “As long as the Chinese leadership continues its brutal occupation of Tibet and refuses to meaningfully address the issue, the Chinese government will not gain the international recognition it so desperately craves.”

Students for a Free Tibet made headlines on August 7, 2007, when an international team of activists unfurled a large banner on the Great Wall of China, overshadowing the official one-year countdown to the Beijing Olympics. Tibetans and supporters have vowed to demonstrate worldwide during the Games in solidarity with Tibetans inside Tibet, who are suffering under an intense clampdown by Chinese authorities in the wake of protests that began on March 10th, the anniversary of the 1959 uprising against China’s occupation of Tibet.

A nonviolent protest begun by a group of monks in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa on March 10th rippled across the entire Tibetan plateau in the following weeks and months. More than two hundred Tibetans were killed in the Chinese government’s violent retaliatory crackdown against the demonstrations and thousands of Tibetans remain ‘disappeared’ or in detention. Buddhist monasteries and nunneries in Lhasa have been sealed off and Chinese officials have rolled out political indoctrination campaigns across the region designed to break Tibetan resistance to Chinese rule.

In the run-up to the Olympics, reports have emerged that at least 1,000 Buddhist monks from the major monasteries around Lhasa have been shipped more than 1,000 kilometers away to prisons and detention camps in northern and eastern Tibet. The Times of London (July 7, 2008) reported that family members of the monks were told those detained will be released only after the Olympics are over and that they will be forced to return to their home villages, often far from their Lhasa-based monasteries.

Students for a Free Tibet (SFT) is a network of young people and activists campaigning for Tibetan independence, with 700 chapters in more than thirty countries worldwide. SFT’s international headquarters are in New York, with offices in Toronto, London, and Dharamsala, India.

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