Third Canadian Arrested In China For Protesting Rule In Tibet

Lhadon Tethong is the executive director of the New York-based group, Students for a Free Tibet, and on Wednesday the Canadian was reportedly detained for protesting Chinese rule in the country while in Beijing along with a British colleague, Paul Golding.

A spokesman for the group said the 31-year-old had been in Beijing for the past week and was writing on her blog and posting videos and photos about what the group calls China’s “propaganda campaign” leading up to next year’s Olympic Games.
 
It didn’t take long for local authorities to get word of the popular web page, and after a few days plainclothes security officials began following her. At first three or four officers were watching her, but that number rose to about 30 on Tuesday, said the spokesman.

“Things got worse and worse and the scrutiny became more heavy by the day,” Tenzin Dorjee said. Tethong called her group’s office from her cell phone as she was being detained around 2pm local time.
  
The timing is poignant, coming just hours before more than 1 million people attended the kick off of China’s official Olympic countdown celebration in Beijing’s famous Tiananmen Square (pictured). Dorjee insists the crackdown shows China is not yet ready to host the Olympics.

“On the one hand the Chinese government is trying to proclaim to the world that they are ready to host the Olympics and China is a modern and free nation that should stand alongside the rest of the world,” he said. “But even as they say all that and talk about the progress they have made in freedom and human rights, what actually happens is completely the opposite.”
  
Tethong was born and raised in Victoria to a Tibetan father and Canadian mother and it’s said her father spent years working for the administration of the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan leader now living in India.

Tethong herself has spent eight year working with Students for a Free Tibet and has been the group’s executive director for four.
  
Tethong’s and Golding’s detention came just one day after two other Canadians were taken into custody in Beijing. 25-year-old Melanie Raoul, 32-year-old Sam Price, both of Vancouver, were among six protesters who unfurled a 42-square-metre banner from the Great Wall of China reading “One World, One Dream, Free Tibet 2008.”

Raoul and Price also belong to Students for a Free Tibet. The group has 650 chapters in 30 countries around the world and offices in Vancouver, London and Dharamsala, India.

As of late Wednesday, word came from the group that the three Canadian members had been released and deported, though there was no confirmaton of this.