Eight pro-Tibet protesters deported from China

Thursday, August 14, 2008

BEIJING (AFP) — Eight pro-Tibet activists who staged a protest near Beijing's main Olympic venues have been deported, a spokeswoman for the group Students for a Free Tibet said Thursday.

A unidentified foreigner (C) is escorted by police after being detained for allegedly taking part in a pro-Tibet demonstration near the the main Olympic stadium in Beijing on August 13, 2008. (AFP/Getty Images)

The group unfurled pro-Tibet banners and blocked the entrance to a park on Wednesday, causing a scuffle with police that saw a British television crew roughed up and prevented from reporting the demonstration.

Students for a Free Tibet, who have organised a number of protests around Olympic venues over the past week, said their activists detained were seven Americans and a Japanese national.

"The seven Americans were sent back to Los Angeles and should be arriving shortly," Brianna Cotter told AFP on Thursday.

Pema Yoko, a Tibetan with Japanese citizenship, was sent to Frankfurt, and is taking a flight back to London on Thursday, Cotter said.

Yoko, 25, was born in London to a Tibetan father and Japanese mother.

"I feel a strong sense of commitment to defending Tibetan identity and speaking out against the Chinese government's brutal regime which is destroying my father's homeland," she said in a statement emailed to AFP.

Protesters wearing t-shirts with "Free Tibet" slogans stand with their bicycles chained to the gate of a park in Beijing August 13, 2008. Security forces dragged away five U.S. pro-Tibetan protesters who chained their bicycles to the gate of a northern Beijing park on Wednesday, breaking up the latest protest on the sidelines of the 2008 Olympics. REUTERS/Nir Elias (CHINA)