Beijing - Chinese police detained five more Tibetan
independence supporters at Beijing's Tiananmen Square on Sunday,
after the latest in a series of protests in the Olympic host city.
A video circulated by New York-based Students for a Free Tibet
showed police arresting the protesters and dragging at least two of
them into a shop on the edge of the square.
One of the protesters unfurled a Tibetan flag and shouted 'Free
Tibet' outside the shop while another, identified as 21-year-old
German Tibetan Padma-Dolma Fielitz, was dragged along the floor into
the shop.
'The whole thing lasted about 5 minutes,' Sophia Conroy of
Students for a Free Tibet told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa by
telephone from New York.
'All five protesters were detained by the Chinese authorities and
their present whereabouts and status are unknown,' the group said.
Two US and two Canadian citizens were among the five, including
American John Hocevar, the group's founder, who witnessed a protest
by the group in Tiananmen Square on Saturday.
'I am protesting today to tell the world that, while it stares
mesmerized at China's Olympic Games, my people are being crushed
under the boot of Chinese oppression,' Padma-Dolma Fielitz was quoted
as saying in statement before the protest.
Another five Canadian activists reported that they were held and
questioned at a Beijing hotel on Sunday morning, the group said.
Police on Saturday detained five members of pro-Tibet groups after
they staged a 'die-in' in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, Hocevar and
other supporters said.
Hocevar on Saturday said plain clothes police took away the five
activists after about 10 minutes.
He said uniformed paramilitary and city police stood back and
allowed the plain clothes officers to handle the protest, in contrast
to the rapid and decisive action against three pro-Tibetan protesters
who displayed Tibetan flags near the Olympic Green on Friday evening.
'Our protesters were tackled to the ground in less than a minute,'
Hocevar said of Friday's protest.
Despite the heavy security in Beijing, foreign activists have
managed to stage other protests.
Two US and two British citizens were detained on Wednesday after
the Britons scaled a 40-metre lighting post near the Olympic Green
and unfurled a huge banner calling for independence for China's Tibet
region.
All seven people involved in the two protests on Wednesday and
Friday were quickly deported from China, the Free Tibet Campaign
said.
Three US anti-abortion campaigners staged a brief sit-in on the
edge of Tiananmen Square on Wednesday afternoon, state media said.
Two local pro-Tibetan protesters were thrown out of an Olympic
equestrian event in Hong Kong on Saturday after they unfurled a
Tibetan flag.
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