| | |  Americas & Beyond | August 2008 
Protesters Unfurl Pro-Tibet Banner Near Olympics Venue
 Edward Cody - The Washington Post
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| | Policemen wearing gas masks prepare for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. On Wednesday, two American and two British protesters climbed a pair of lampposts and unfurled banners demanding freedom for Tibet near the stadium that will host the opening of the games on Friday. (Mn Chan/Getty Images) | | |
Beijing - Two American and two British protesters slipped through a smothering Olympic security net Wednesday, climbed a pair of lamp posts and unfurled banners demanding freedom for Tibet near the new stadium where the Beijing Games are to open Friday night.
The showy protest, which took place shortly before the final leg of the Olympic torch relay set out from Tiananmen Square to the cheers of bused-in crowds, constituted a substantial embarrassment for Chinese security forces, who have vowed to prevent political demonstrations by foreigners as well as Chinese during the games.
The four were led away by police but not arrested, according to Chinese authorities.
Although it lasted only a short time, the stunt illustrated the challenge facing China's Communist Party rulers. They have resolved to show television viewers in China and the world a prosperous, harmonious country during the celebrations, even at the cost of heavy-handed security restrictions. But foreign protesters, including Tibetan independence supporters, Darfur activists and foreign-based practitioners of the Falun Gong spiritual movement, have sought with equal resolve to make the Olympics a stage for their causes.
"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," Tenzin Dorjee, deputy director of Students for a Free Tibet, said in a statement.
One prominent Darfur activist, the U.S. speedskating champion Joey Cheek, said Tuesday that Chinese officials had telephoned him to say his Chinese visa was revoked without explanation, forcing him to cancel plans to be on hand for the Olympics.
The many Chinese who might be tempted to protest during the games -- including human rights advocates, pro-democracy agitators or farmers disgruntled over land confiscations -- have been largely cowed into silence by a security crackdown that has left thousands in detention, under house arrest or banned from travel to Beijing. But the foreigners, under consular protection and running much less risk of imprisonment, have pushed forward with plans to take advantage of China's moment in the sun despite a tightening of visa requirements in months leading up to the games.
Soon after the torch relay, three Americans in Tiananmen Square protested against China's population control policies, with one of them shouting "End the brutality," the Reuters news agency reported. Police took them off the square and, after questioning, allowed them to leave, the agency said.
In another quiet but short-lived protest, Tibetan activists invited a group of foreign correspondents to a small Beijing hotel to view a movie promoting Tibetan independence. An attempt to show the movie a second time was interrupted by authorities, forcing cancellation of other showings that had been planned through the day, organizers said.
The actress Mia Farrow, meanwhile, announced that she will be holding a news conference about the Chinese role in Sudan's embattled Darfur region on Thursday, seeking to steal the limelight from what is planned as a spectacular Olympic opening ceremony the next day. Farrow will be speaking from Chad, which neighbors Sudan in central Africa, because she was denied a visa to China, according to the advocacy group Dream for Darfur.
The Beijing protests took place despite thousands of police, paramilitary forces and soldiers who have been stationed around the capital to prevent terrorist attacks and control the streets during the Games, which run from Friday until Aug. 24. Their numbers and repeated security checks have threatened to take the fun out of the Olympics, said Shi Yinhong, who runs the Center for American Studies at People's University.
"This is not a global party," he said.
Only pre-screened groups with passes were allowed to enter Tiananmen Square on Wednesday morning to see the torch get carried around at the beginning of a three-day parade through the city that ends Friday with a ceremonial lighting of the Olympic Flame. Yao Ming, the basketball star, carried the torch out of the Forbidden City, passing under a portrait of Mao Zedong and out onto the vast Tiananmen esplanade. A Central Chinese Television helicopter hovered overhead and People's Armed Police formed a security cordon between spectators and the torch bearers.
Several layers of police officers also have cordoned off the Olympic Village, where the Bird's Nest stadium, with its trademark latticework dome, sits alongside other Olympic facilities in a carefully landscaped park. Nevertheless, according to Students For a Free Tibet, the four protesters sneaked into an intersection near the stadium at dawn. Two climbed up a pair of lampposts and unfurled their banners around 6 a.m. One was about 60 feet above the street, the other about 20 feet above the street when they opened up their protest signs, the group said.
Kate Woznow, the group's campaigns director, said one banner stated "One, World, One Dream: Free Tibet" in English. The other stated "Tibet Will Be Free" in English and "Free Tibet" in Chinese, she said in a telephone interview.
The official New China News Agency, in a short dispatch on the incident, said the banners hung for 12 minutes before police arrived and hustled the protesters away "for investigation." Quoting police, it said all four were British citizens, three men and a woman who entered China on tourist visas.
Students for a Free Tibet, however, identified the two who climbed up the lamp posts as Iain Thom, a 24-year-old Briton from Edinburgh, and Phill Bartell, a 34-year-old U.S. citizen who lives in Boulder, Colo. Lucy Marion, a 23-year-old Briton from Cambridge, and Tiran Mink, 32, a U.S. citizen from Portland, Ore., "provided support" on the ground and watched out for police, she said.
The banners were visible for nearly an hour before police intervened and took the four away," the Tibet activist group said. "Their current whereabouts are unknown," it added in a statement.
In the past, foreigners involved in such protests have been held for a short while and then deported under Chinese regulations that make protests illegal except with prior authorization from police. |
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