Four Tibet activists, including a Tibetan-American, were detained by Chinese authorities yesterday after demonstrating at Mount Everest’s main base camp in Tibet.

The activists unfurled a banner reading ‘One World, One Dream, Free Tibet 2008’ in English, and ‘Free Tibet’ written in Tibetan and Chinese.

The protest was held on the eve of the International Olympic Committee’s announcement of the final Beijing 2008 Olympic torch relay route and as a Chinese team of climbers prepared a trial ascent of the mountain. If the IOC approves the route, China will take the torch over Mount Everest and through Tibet, a move that Tibetans and their supporters decry as offering international approval to China’s brutal occupation of Tibet.

“The Chinese government hopes to use the 2008 Olympic Games to conceal the brutality of its occupation of Tibet and win the international community’s acceptance as a modern power on the world stage,” said Lhadon Tethong, the Executive Director of Students for a Free Tibet (SFT) from Kathmandu. “Mount Everest is not in China, it’s in Tibet, very near where Chinese border guards shot and killed unarmed Tibetan refugees last September. The International Olympic Committee has no business promoting the Chinese government’s political agenda by allowing the torch to be run through Tibet.”

Parts of the protest were also captured on video. Click here to view video footage of the protest

According to an eyewitness report, Chinese authorities detained the four activists, including Tenzin Dorjee, a Tibetan-American, who was wearing a t-shirt that read ‘No Torch through Tibet’. Prior to his detention, he lit a symbolic torch of Tibetan freedom and sang the Tibetan National Anthem. Tenzin Dorjee is the first known exiled Tibetan to stage a protest inside Tibet.

“Tibetans worldwide are looking to the 2008 Beijing Olympics as an unprecedented opportunity to expose the truth about Chinese rule in Tibet,” said Tenzin Choeying, the National Director of SFT India. “The torch of freedom continues to burn brightly in the hearts and minds of Tibetans everywhere and China can expect more protests of this nature in the months leading up to and during the Games.”

Protest Also Marks Panchen Lama’s Birthday

The high altitude demonstration coincided with the eighteenth birthday of the Panchen Lama, Gedhun Choekyi Nyima – Tibetan Buddhism’s most important spiritual leader after the Dalai Lama – and a political prisoner of the Chinese government. He and his family have been held since 1995, when he was only six years old. China has denied all requests by foreign diplomats and United Nations representatives to see him.

Read the full press release from SFT

View the video footage of the protest

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