The president of Students for a Free Tibet is in Beijing right now, exactly one year ahead of the 2008 Olympics, vlogging and blogging about Tibetan sovereignty and being a general pain in the ass to the Chinese government.

Lhadon Tethong's liveblogging experiment is incredibly ballsy or incredibly foolhardy, depending on how you look at it -- hard to imagine this lasting long before authorities arrest, extradite, or take some other action to stop the activity.

Apparently, she's already attracted a group of official government "escorts".

Link to "Beijing Wide Open" blog. Today's posts from her include an item about Canadian activists who were detained by authorities after placing a giant "Free Tibet" banner on the Great Wall of China. Their status and whereabouts are currently not known. (thanks, Oxblood and Nathan Freitas!)

UPDATE 1: several BoingBoing readers in Beijing write in to say that access to the blog is blocked there by 'net censorship.

UPDATE 2: Lhadon Tethong has been arrested, along with activists charged with placing the protest banner on the Great Wall.

UPDATE 3: Tethong and the other activists have been released: Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 06:16:00 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

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