Four activists, including a Tibetan-American, were arrested at Everest Base Camp yesterday. This was after a protest of the Beijing 2008 Olympic torch route through Tibet and up mount Everest that is currently being planned and practiced.
What is amazing and relevant to this group is that the protest was coordinated through satellite phones and data modems, using SMS, Skype, and Streaming Video all in realtime from Everest back to the US. Live video of the protest was sent from a camera person with a wireless transmitter to a laptop which streamed it out to the web over a 400kbps BGAN satellite connection. This footage was obtained by people in the US who immediately uploaded to the web to various sites such as YouTube and Blip.tv <http://blip.tv/> . The camera person was arrested at Everest as well so without this we would have no pictures or video footage available at all. Even without arrest it would be at least 48 hours until any tape could get out of the area due to the vast distance and difficulty of travel. Unfortunately, it has now been over a day since it occurred and we still have no word on their location or status. You can see an edited version of the video footage here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfe57qES7F8&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fblog%2Estud\ entsforafreetibet%2Eorg%2Findex%2Ephp <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfe57qES7F8&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fblog%2Estu\ dentsforafreetibet%2Eorg%2Findex%2Ephp> Additional footage in Quicktime and under CC-BY-SA licenses is available at: http://onedreamtv.com/everest <http://onedreamtv.com/everest> The official press release and other info are all here: http://blog.studentsforafreetibet.org/2007/04/24/unprecedented-high-alti\ tude-free-tibet-protest-on-mount-everest/ <http://blog.studentsforafreetibet.org/2007/04/24/unprecedented-high-alt\ itude-free-tibet-protest-on-mount-everest/> Please help spread the word if you are so inclined. Best, Nathan [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
