Chinese Police Break Up Pro-Tibet Action at Olympics
August 13, 2008
A journalist covering the incident for Britain's ITN news was also reportedly wrestled to the ground by police and briefly detained.
On Wednesday, Aug. 13, protestors wearing T-shirts that said "Free Tibet" went to the demonstration site, at the entrance to a northern Beijing park.
Two of the protesters, who were attached to the New York based Students for a Free Tibet, chained themselves to the main gate of the China Ethnic Culture Park, said Kate Woznow, campaign director for the activists' group.
One of the protestors, a Tibetan-Japanese woman, spoke about the park and the suppression of Tibetans by Chinese authorities in Tibet, Woznow said. Two other protestors unfurled a pro-Tibet banner on a bridge near the park's entrance.
Journalist accuses China of "gross rules violation"
All of the activists except for the Tibetan-Japanese woman were Americans, Woznow said.
Meanwhile, a journalist from British TV station ITV News was detained for half an hour while trying to cover the protest.
"The protest might be illegal but reporting was legal. It was a gross violation of rules for reporting," the reporter John Ray told dpa news service after he was released.
On Sunday, Aug. 10, police detained five Tibetan independence supporters who unfurled a Tibetan flag and shouted "Free Tibet" at Beijing's Tiananmen Square, dragging at least two of them into a shop on the edge of the square.