By Phurbu Thinley
Dharamsala, August 9: Eight Tibet activists, detained separately on two different incidences inside China, have been deported from China after, what Chinese Authorities say, they were dealt according to law.
The activists, all from the New York based Students for a Free Tibet, have been released last night from detention and flown to Hong kong according to latest reports.
According to a Canadian news site, they are expected to arrive in Canada sometimes Thursday.
“We were kept in a room, all six of us, and had to sleep in chairs for the past 14 hours,” Price, 32, one of the activists told media people after landing in Hong Kong.
The latest report on Lhadon’s blog, updated by her coordinators, says that that they received a quick call from Lhadon saying that she, Paul and, six others detained on Tuesday, were being put on a plane to Hong Kong.
Lhadon, the executive director of the group, was taken into custody on Wednesday along with British colleague Paul Golding for attempting to meet IOC officials in Beijing to raise the issue of Tibet and Human rights concerns.
Two of them were arrested en route Tiananmen Square, the venue where the official celebration marking one year countdown to the 2008 Games was due to take place on Wednesday.
Lhadon had been in Beijing for the past week, attempting to bring attention to what the group says are China’s broken promises to improve human rights leading up to the Games. She has been regularly updating her stories on the blog.
Before her arrest on Wednesday, she had been repeatedly trying to talk to IOC President Jacques Rogge.
The six other activists were detained Tuesday after they unfurled a 42-square-metre banner on the Great Wall that read “One World, One Dream, Free Tibet 2008.”
The official slogan for the games is “One World, One Dream.”
The protest display on the wall by Melanie Raoul (Vancouver, Canada), Sam Price (Vancouver, Canada), Leslie Kaup (South St. Paul, Minnesota), Nupur Modi (Oakland, California), Duane Martinez (Sausalito, California) and Pete Speller (Cambridge, UK) lasted for two hours before they were arrested and taken away by Chinese authorities.
Meanwhile, according to a media report, family members of the activists, many of whom are from Canada, are said to be worried about their safety until they get out of Hong Kong.
At this point, Chinese officials have declined to give detail comments on the decision to deport the activists.
