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US expresses concern over protesters' detentions

By Shai Oster | WSJ

The U.S. has expressed worry over China’s continued detention of six pro-Tibet American protestors held since Tuesday.

“We are concerned by China’s treatment of protestors and journalists during the Olympic games,” said a U.S. embassy spokesman Friday.

“We encourage the government of China to demonstrate respect for human rights including freedom of expression and freedom of religion of all people during the Olympic Games and beyond,” the statement said.

The detentions are the first of their kind during the Olympics, according to U.S. Embassy. Previously, authorities have moved to quickly deport the handful of foreign pro-Tibet and Christian protestors who have staged several small demonstrations in Beijing during the Olympic Games.

Embassy officials said Chinese authorities did not disclose when the protestors would be released. Students for Free Tibet said they had been given 10-day administrative detentions. U.S. officials met with the group and said they were being treated well.

In addition, on August 21, two other Americans, Jeremy Michael Wells and John Allen Watterberg, were detained after hanging a Free Tibet banner near an Olympic venue.

Human rights groups and advocates for a free media have strongly condemned China’s human rights performance during the Olympics games. “As we feared, the Beijing Olympic games have been a period conducive to arrests, convictions, censorship, surveillance and harassment of more than 100 journalists, bloggers and dissidents,” Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Robert Ménard said, according to a statement by the group.

They allege that 22 journalists were harassed or detained during the games, 50 human rights activists in Beijing detained, or harassed, and 47 pro-Tibet activists were detained in Beijing. In addition, Reporters Without Borders alleges that 15 Chinese who had applied to demonstrate in special protest zones Beijing had created under international pressure had been arrested.

No one has successfully held a demonstration in the special protest zones, quashing any hopes that the games would foster greater freedom of expression or tolerance for dissent.

Also on Friday, Students for a Free Tibet held an impromptu — and brief — news conference near Beijing diplomatic quarters as one of their ongoing protests.

“This is not the end of our campaign, this is only the beginning,” said Alice Speller, former National Coordinator of Students for a Free Tibet UK. “When China was awarded the Olympics, protest was inevitable … what we’re doing today is standing in solidarity with Tibetans inside Tibet.”

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Published in The Wall Street Journal