MB Civic

U.S. Tibet activists return to Nepal

2007/4
By BINAJ GURUBACHARYA
Associated Press Writer
 
KATMANDU, Nepal – Five Americans who
were detained on Mount Everest after
protesting for Tibetan independance from
China said Saturday they feared for their
lives while being held by Chinese security
guards and were deprived of sleep, food
and water for hours.

“The entire thing was fairly traumatic … not
sleeping for over 30 hours, being denied
food and water for over 14, basically being
psychologically terrorized,” Shannon
Service, of San Francisco, said Saturday in
the Nepalese capital, Katmandu.
 
The fifth person in the group, Jeff Friesen,
of Boulder, Colo., was detained a day later
because he managed to run and was able
to transmit video footage of the activists
holding up a banner at the Everest base
camp on the Tibetan side of the mountain.

Service said in the course of the
interrogation, a Chinese woman guard
threatened her, saying: “If you don‘t tell
the truth, you will sleep in this room and
harm will come to you.”

The five are members of Students for a
Free Tibet, which planned and organized
the protest.

China‘s plans to take the Olympic torch to
the top of Mount Everest is seen by some
as a way for the government to underscore
its claims to Tibet.