Team Geared Up

DUBLIN, IRELAND (Geared Up Blog) - I wonder are these the highest arrests ever made? Although there may be the first summits of the year as Maxut and Vassily, 2 Kazakhs, are making and alpine style ascent from ABC on the North side. Without Oxygen, pre-set camps or any fixed ropes on the higher parts of the mountain.

Four US citizens were detained by Chinese authorities yesterday in Everest’s north side BC. The Americans, calling for the independence of Tibet and against Beijing Olympics, unfurled a banner reading “One World, One Dream, Free Tibet 2008″, and “Free Tibet” written in Tibetan and Chinese.

“According to an eyewitness report, Chinese authorities detained the activists, including Tenzin Dorjee, a Tibetan-American, who was wearing a T-shirt that read “No Torch through Tibet,” reported Phayul. “Prior to his detention, he lit a symbolic torch of Tibetan freedom and sang the Tibetan National Anthem. Tenzin Dorjee is the first known exiled Tibetan to stage a protest inside Tibet.”

“Mount Everest is not in China, it’s in Tibet, very near where Chinese border guards shot and killed unarmed Tibetan refugees last September,” said Lhadon Tethong, the Executive Director of Students for a Free Tibet - organizers of the protest. “The International Olympic Committee has no business promoting the Chinese government’s political agenda by allowing the torch to be run through Tibet.”

-Eoinod-