Three US citizens and a Tibetan-American were detained on Mount Everest yesterday as they called for independence for Tibet and protested against the Beijing Olympics, an activist group said.
The protest was organized by Students for a Free Tibet, which said three people were taken away after holding up a banner at a base camp on the Tibetan side of the mountain that said "One World, One Dream, Free Tibet 2008."
The fourth person detained by Chinese authorities was a cameraperson, said the group's executive director Lhadon Tethong. "One World, One Dream" is the slogan of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
PHOTO: AFP
The International Olympic Committee will announce the route for the 2008 Olympic torch relay in Beijing today. Chinese officials have said they want to take it to the top of the world's tallest mountain.
"The Chinese government hopes to use the 2008 Olympic Games to conceal the brutality of its occupation of Tibet," Tethong said from Kathmandu, Nepal.
A woman at the Tibet government office in Lhasa who gave her surname as Li said she was unclear about the protest. People who answered the telephone at the Tibet and Lhasa police offices also said they were not clear about the protest.
Tethong said three of detained people were Americans and one was Tibetan-American. They also held up a symbolic torch.
She said more than 70 Chinese climbers were in the base camp preparing for a trial climb to see if it is possible to take a torch to the top of 8,848m Mount Everest.
"One of the key points for the Chinese in their Olympic propaganda is to show happy Tibetans. They are very much using the Olympics, so we are also using it to call for an independent Tibet," Tethong said.
Meanwhile, a joint report released yesterday by Human Rights in China and Minority Rights Group International said China's ethnic minorities suffer from widespread discrimination and abuse, with laws supposed to protect them either lacking or simply not enforced, sowing the seeds of domestic unrest.
Minorities found it harder to get jobs, were increasingly denied the chance to educate their children in their mother tongue and benefited far less from the country's rapid economic growth, the report added.
"While many laws, regulations, policies and statements address the importance of equality among Chinese ethnic groups, the PRC [People's Republic of China] is not meeting its international obligations on minority rights for Mongols, Tibetans or Uighurs," the report said.
A signaling system malfunction disrupted high-speed rail (HSR) services beginning at 8am today, with trains temporarily reduced to three northbound and three southbound trains per hour as authorities conduct inspections. The malfunction occurred on a section of track in Miaoli County during pre-operation checks early this morning, forcing northbound and southbound trains to use a single track, the HSR operator said. The regular schedule has been replaced with three hourly trains offering only nonreserved seating in each direction, stopping at every station, it said, adding that business class cars would still have reserved seating. Departures from terminal stations are scheduled at the top
DRONE CENTRAL: Taiwan aims to become Asia’s democratic hub for drones, with most exports focused on high-quality military-grade models, an official said Taiwan’s drone industry is expected to expand significantly by 2030, producing 100,000 units per month and exporting half of them, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Current drone production capacity is about 15,000 units per month, but the industry can quickly scale up as demand increases, Industrial Development Administration Director-General Chiou Chyou-huey (邱求慧) told a news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s drone output grew 2.5-fold last year to NT$12.9 billion (US$408.3 million) under a government program to develop the uncrewed vehicle sector, he said. The Executive Yuan in October last year approved plans to invest NT$44.2 billion into domestic production of uncrewed aerial
VERBOSE VESSELS: A CGA cutter and a China Coast Guard exchanged verbal barbs for more than a day in Taiwanese-controlled waters before the Chinese vessel left The Taiwanese and Chinese coast guards had a standoff near the strategically located Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) in the north of the South China Sea, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said yesterday. The two sides engaged in intense radio exchanges over sovereignty claims during the 33-hour standoff. China Coast Guard vessel 3501 eventually left the restricted waters, 26.6 nautical miles (49.2km) west of the Pratas Islands, at 5pm yesterday, the CGA said. Lying approximately between southern Taiwan and Hong Kong, the Taiwan-controlled Pratas are seen by some security experts as vulnerable to Chinese attack due to their distance — more than
WARNING: China should stop engaging in actions that undermine regional peace and stability, as it would only build resentment among people across the Strait, the CGA said China has deployed more than 100 navy, coast guard and other vessels in waters from the Yellow Sea to the South China Sea and the western Pacific since US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) met in Beijing, National Security Council Secretary-General Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) said yesterday. “In this part of the world, #China is the one & only PROBLEM wrecking the #StatusQuo & threatening regional peace & stability,” Wu wrote on X. In a separate post, he said Beijing was coercing Taiwan’s maritime domain, calling it illegal and provocative, after the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) expelled a
RSS