On Monday 3 December, Pete Speller, of the 'Great Wall Six' and Paul Golding, who was part of the Beijing Wide Open blog, spoke about their experiences in China to students at Warwick University. Pete was arrested and detained for 36 hours in a police station in Beijing after he and 5 other activists from Students For A Free Tibet unfurled a 450 sqft banner on the Great Wall of China reading "One World One Dream Free Tibet 2008" in English and Chinese. After being interrogated, intimidated and threatened with violence the "Great Wall Six" were deported to Hong Kong. Whilst Pete was hanging the banner Paul was with Executive Director of Students For A Free Tibet, Lhadon Tethong, in Beijing. They were blogging about the propaganda being put out by the Chinese goverment in the run up to the Olympics. After several tension filled days of constant surveilance by the Chinese Police, interviews with journalists and an attempted meeting with IOC president Jaque Roggue they were arrested. After their 12 hours in police custody, they were deported along with the others to Hong Kong.

After they told their stories, a lively question and answer session brought up some interesting debate about the Tibetan independance movement. One Chinese man, unhappy with hearing the truth about China, stormed out of the hall shouting "Tibet is part of China!" and ripping posters off the walls. Others were more happy to stay and debate the issues.

President of the Warwick SFT Group Ed Eden said "It was really great to have them here, people really seemed to enjoy the talk. Hopefully this will boost our membership."

If you would like Pete, Paul or anyone else from the SFT board to talk about the Olympics campaign email info@sftuk.org.