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Three Canadians detained in China for protesting the Communist government's rule in Tibet have been released and deported from the country, a New-York-based pro-Tibet group said Wednesday.
“Right now what we confirm is that they have been released and that they have been put on a plane,” Nick Gulotta of the group Students for a Free Tibet said in a telephone interview from New York.
The group's executive director, Lhadon Tethon, of Victoria, was the third Canadian detained when she was taken into custody earlier Wednesday. She had been visiting Beijing and writing on her blog and posting videos and photos online about what the group calls China's “propaganda campaign” in the year leading up to the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.
Two other Canadians — Melanie Raoul, 25, and Sam Price, 32, both of Vancouver — were detained on Tuesday.
They were among six protesters who unfurled a 42-square-metre banner from the Great Wall of China reading “One World, One Dream, Free Tibet 2008” — the slogan used by the group to focus attention on Tibet during the countdown to the Olympics.
Mr. Gulotta said the group did not know where the freed activists were being sent, but another group member said witnesses have phoned from Beijing saying the plane was bound for Hong Kong.
In Ottawa, a Foreign Affairs spokesman said Canadian Embassy officials in Beijing have asked Chinese authorities for confirmation that Canadian citizens have been arrested. “There has been no confirmation yet from Chinese officials of the arrests,” he said Wednesday morning.
In New York, Tenzin Dorjee, a spokesman for Students for a Free Tibet, said Ms. Tethong, 31, had been in Beijing for the past week.
In one of her video postings, Ms. Tethong called on everyone who believes in a free Tibet to “get into the streets with a global uprising over the next year” for the sake of the Tibetan people.
“If you can go to Beijing during the games, engage in simple, but strong and powerful peaceful protest,” Ms. Tethong said.
“We will challenge the Chinese leadership to truly once and for all resolve the Tibetan issue and improve the life of the people living there on the ground.”
Soon after the her blog started to receive attention, plainclothes security officials began following her, Mr. Dorjee said.
Ms. Tethong called her group's office from her cell phone as she was being detained around 2 p.m. local time.
The detention came just hours before the beginning of China's official Olympic countdown celebration in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. Tens of thousands were on hand, including dignitaries from the International Olympic Committee.
Mr. Dorjee said the crackdown shows China is not yet ready to host the Olympics.
“On the one hand the Chinese government is trying to proclaim to the world that they are ready to host the Olympics and China is a modern and free nation that should stand alongside the rest of the world,” he said.
“But even as they say all that and talk about the progress they have made in freedom and human rights, what actually happens is completely the opposite.”
Ms. Tethong was born and raised in Victoria to a Tibetan father and Canadian mother.
Mr. Dorjee said Ms. Tethong's father spent years working for the administration of the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan leader now based in India. Ms. Tethong herself has worked for Students for a Free Tibet for eight years and has been the group's executive director for four.
The Chinese government says Tibet has been part of China for centuries, but many Tibetans say their homeland was essentially an independent state most of the time.
Chinese Communist troops moved into Tibet in 1951, and the Dalai Lama went into exile. Tibetans regard China's presence as an occupation and say Beijing rules the region with a heavy hand.
The issue of Canadian citizens being detained in China isn't new.
Huseyin Celil, 38, of Burlington, Ont., has been held in China on terror charges since 2006. He was handed a life sentence in April and an appeal was turned down last month.
Mr. Celil belongs to China's Muslim Uighur minority. China has refused to recognize Mr. Celil's Canadian citizenship.
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