Up to eight Tibet activists who staged a protest yesterday near the main Olympics venue and a British television journalist were detained by police, a rights group and a TV producer said.
The New York-based Students for a Free Tibet said two of their members hung a banner that said “Free Tibet” on a bridge in the Chinese Ethnic Culture Park, south of the National Stadium.
Another five or six members handcuffed themselves to each other and to bicycles at the front gate of the park, said Lhadon Tethong, the group’s executive director.
PHOTO: AP
All — including Pema Yoko, a half-Tibetan woman with Japanese citizenship — were detained by police and plainclothes security agents, Tethong said.
The journalist was identified as John Ray of ITV News.
“The Tibetan protesters were in the park, John Ray was running behind them, the police were running behind him,” said Bessie Du, a Beijing-based producer for the program, who watched the situation unfold from afar.
Du said police put Ray into a car, despite his efforts to show them his Olympic press accreditation.
A man who answered the telephone at the Beijing Public Security Bureau refused to comment. The park’s security director who would give only his surname, Dong, confirmed the protest took place.
The demonstration was the largest in a string of brief protests — mostly by foreigners hoping to use the Olympics to draw attention to their causes — throughout Beijing since the games started last week.
Most have had less than five people and foreign activists have been deported.
Also yesterday, a rights group said a Chinese activist who applied for permission to protest against corruption during the Olympics has been taken away by security agents.
Ji Sizun wanted to demonstrate in one of three protest zones Chinese officials have designated for the games, Human Rights Watch said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Olympic officials insisted yesterday that the decision to have one girl lip-sync another’s voice during a song featured in the Beijing Games’ opening ceremony was not about who was cuter, but about the best performance.
Organizers were put on the defensive after the musical director of last Friday’s Games curtain raiser revealed the last-minute switch — the latest embarrassment for officials who have gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure the Games are flawless.
In a sparkling red dress, nine-year-old Lin Miaoke (林妙可) soared on wires above the Bird’s Nest national stadium and mouthed the words to Ode to the Motherland.
But the voice everybody heard was a prerecorded version of the song by seven-year-old Yang Peiyi (楊沛宜), who officials decided sounded better than Li Miaoke but did not look as good.
Sun Weide (孫維德), the spokesman for the Beijing organizing committee, said the decision to use both girls was made by the artistic director after consulting with broadcasters, who had recommended the change. He did not name the broadcasters.
Chen’s original interview was posted on Beijing Radio’s Web site on Sunday night. By Tuesday the link was shut down. The Chinese government routinely blocks sites that could cause embarrassment to the country’s communist rulers.
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