MB Civic

Local man recounts protest on Everest

BY TOM VOGT Columbian staff writerThe
Columbian
April 30, 2007

When you set out to tweak the leaders of
Communist China, you want to consider
worst-case scenarios.

“I had all the ideas about what a Chinese
prison was like,” Vancouver’s Jeff Friesen
said after what was supposed to be a
Himalayan wedding turned into the most
high-level protest in history: a
demonstration on Mount Everest. “I’ve
done other direct action before; you think
ahead,” Friesen said.

After unfurling banners supporting Tibetan
independence and putting the video on the
Web, Friesen and his four companions
were arrested by Chinese police, then
expelled from the country Friday.

Members of a human-rights group,
Students For a Free Tibet, the five activists
were able to relax this weekend after all of
them spent time in custody.

Friesen, who now lives in Thailand, said he
never faced that worst-case scenario. He
spent a day evading police in a story that
had some elements of a spy movie. But
things were rougher for his four
companions: Kirsten Westby of Boulder,
Colo.; Tenzin Dorjee of New York; and
Shannon Service and Laurel Mac Sutherlin
of San Francisco. “They were treated very
poorly that first day, while I was on the
run,” Friesen said by telephone from his
hotel in Katmandu, Nepal.

In a press conference on Saturday in
Katmandu, the other members of the
group recounted their time in custody.
“The entire thing was fairly traumatic? not
sleeping for over 30 hours, being denied
food and water for over 14, basically being
psychologically terrorized,” Service told an
Associated Press reporter.

A female Chinese guard threatened her
during the interrogation, Service said,
saying: “If you don’t tell the truth, you will
sleep in this room and harm will come to
you.”

But things worked out well for the group,
Friesen said, both in terms of his group’s
safe return as well as the publicity they
generated.

Olympic torch route

Their protest was timed to coincide with
the announcement of the Olympic torch
route, as China prepares for the 2008
games in Beijing. Plans to take the torch to
the top of the world’s highest peak are
seen as a way for China to solidify its claims
to Tibet.

“Students for a Free Tibet really thought
this out thoroughly, and the timing was
just right,” the 1991 graduate of Fort
Vancouver High School said. “Everything
came together.” There was a lot to
organize: Just getting to the base camp of
Mount Everest at the elevation of 17,600
feet is a major trek. “I’ve done quite a bit of
mountaineering,” said the University of
Washington graduate. “I’ve been climbing
since I moved to Seattle.

For this trip, “We had to make false
itineraries and plans. Three different teams
arrived at base camp from different
directions so that we wouldn’t be noticed.”
Friesen said he was in a wedding party,
and “I was the best man,” he said. Two
members of the group were “supposed to
be married at base camp and we were
going to videotape it. That was our cover.”
Instead, three members of the team
unfurled banners, including one in English
saying, “One World, One Dream, Free Tibet
2008.”

Friesen’s job at that point was “doing all
the technical work for the team. “We had a
pretty complicated setup, with a live
satellite feed of the event While Shannon
was filming, I was in a tent, making contact
with Students for a Free Tibet, making sure
the satellite feed was going out and
keeping the gear warm,” Friesen said. “It
was cold!”

‘About 30 police trucks’

Things got hot in a hurry when what
Friesen recalled as “about 30 police trucks”
showed up. “Once they started arresting
us, Shannon gave me high-resolution video
tapes she had been shooting. The video
stream we sent out was low resolution, and
we wanted high resolution we could get
out for the media. “I took those tapes and
the camera and ran right past a person
apprehending Shannon,” Friesen said”They
closed things down, and I hid while they
searched.”

And that’s where Friesen completed
another element of the group’s plan.

“I handed the tapes off to another couple
that had come up separately. Then I was
running for a day. At 3 a.m., they knocked
on my hotel door.”

Even though police didn’t find anything in
his room, Friesen didn’t feel he was in the
clear. “Not so much. I stalled as long as I
could. I said I threw the tapes off the side
of a road,” he said. “We even went up to
camp to look for them, giving that other
couple time to get out of the country. It
worked.”

It was not Friesen’s first time in custody. He
and several companions were arrested
after a protest in Colorado, where Friesen
said his life took a turn. “During grad
school at the University of Colorado, I
moved from physics to activist,” he said.

In September 2001, Friesen and another
man climbed a 245-foot construction crane
in downtown Denver to unfurl a 40-by-70-
foot sign that included the phrase “Wage
Peace Now.” A total of six people were
arrested for trespassing; a jury found them
not guilty.

Friesen was a staffer for Alternative Radio,
a weekly radio show based in Boulder,
from 2000 to 2003. (The show is carried in
the Portland-Vancouver market on KOPB
and KBOO.)

David Barsamian, executive director of
Alternative Radio, said this week’s protest
reflected Friesen’s concern about the lack
of human rights in Tibet, and “is tied to the
larger issue of Tibet’s sovereignty.” And
Friesen is a good person to have on the
team for that sort of effort, Barsamian told
The Columbian: “He’s devoted, bright and
very media-savvy.” And Friesen was savvy
enough to recognize how the Chinese tried
to boost their own media image after
arresting his team.

“We were driven into a building that
looked like a four-star hotel,” he
said. “There was a bouquet of flowers and
a fruit plate, and all the Chinese
cameramen there were yelling at us, ‘Eat!’ ?
Trying to make it look good.”

Tom Vogt can be contacted at 
tom.vogt@columbian.com