Six foreigners given 10 days’ detention: Beijing police

AFP

August 21, 2008

BEIJING (AFP) — Beijing police said Thursday it had handed out 10-day detention terms to six foreigners believed by an overseas activist group to be pro-Tibet campaigners involved in Olympic protests this week.

In a brief faxed statement, the city police information department said “Thomas” and five other foreigners had been apprehended on Tuesday for “upsetting public order”, without identifying the six people any further.

“Beijing police decided to give the six 10 days of administrative detention,” the faxed statement said.

Administrative detention is a punishment that can be meted out by Chinese police without having to go through the courts.

Students For a Free Tibet said it assumed the six were American pro-Tibet activists who police detained in Beijing on Tuesday.

“These young men were in Beijing to amplify Tibetan voices calling for freedom and human rights and the right of all people to freedom of expression,” Students For a Free Tibet executive director Lhadon Tethong said.

“They are no more guilty of a crime than Tibetans or Chinese who speak out for justice.

“For the Chinese authorities to sentence them at all shows the government’s paranoia and intolerance of even the most peaceful challenges to its control.”

Students For a Free Tibet has orchestrated a series of protests in Beijing to coincide with the Olympics in an effort to highlight what it says is China’s repressive 57-year rule of Tibet.

The group previously identified one of the six detained as Tom Grant, and described him as an activist in Beijing to support and promote human rights, freedom of expression, and freedom for the Tibetan people at the Olympics.

Another of those detained on Tuesday was James Powderly, an American artist who planned to project a giant laser beam onto a Beijing building with a message in support of a free Tibet.

Beijing police declined to comment when asked to elaborate on its statement.

Chinese paramilitary policemen standing guard in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square