A demonstration on Mount Everest protests China's proposal to carry the 2008 Summer Olympic torch through the region on route to Beijing.

Below is an extracts from an article published by Inside Bay Area:

A nose-thumbing anti-China demonstration on Mt. Everest in Tibet Wednesday [25 April 2007] by four activists, including two Bay Area residents, brought cheers from members of the East Bay's large Tibetan community.

The activists held up a banner at the Mt. Everest Base Camp calling for a Tibet free of Chinese domination and mocking China's Olympic slogan, changing it from "One World One Dream," to "One World, One Dream, Free Tibet 2008."

The four, including Shannon Service and Laurel Max Sutherlin, of Sausalito, were being detained by Chinese authorities for questioning.

The activists were protesting China's bid to take the Olympic torch enroute to the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing to the top of the world's tallest mountain on the border between Tibet and Nepal.

They were detained while Service was taping the protest, sending her images wirelessly to a laptop computer, which was connected by modem to a satellite, said Kate Woznow, of Students for a Free Tibet, the New York City-based group that planned the protest.

"It was pretty amazing, we were able to download the images as it happened,'' she said. Local Tibetans saluted the effort.

Demonstrations like the one on Mt. Everest are very important, said Tenzin Tsephel, of Oakland, president of the Tibetan Association of Northern California. "The very existence of Tibetans as human beings is being wiped out there by the Chinese," Tsephel said. "There's a mass influx of Chinese into Tibet and Tibetans in Tibet have no way to protest or fight for their rights."

It's up to Tibetans and others outside the country to speak up for them, Tesephel said.

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Tenzin Dickyi, of Oakland, a member of the University of California, Davis chapter of Students for a Free Tibet, said the protest was important. "China is using the the Olympic Games to cover up the brutality of the occupation of Tibet," she said. Dickyi noted the protest also comes on the 18th birthday of Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, who is being held under house arrest in Beijing by China. Tibetans believe he is the 11th incarnation of the Panchen Lama, the second highest person in the Tibetan religious hierarchy.

But the Chinese government has declared a second, more Chinese-friendly Tibetan as the Panchen Lama. One of the Mount Everest protesters, reached by cell phone, said they had been well treated but did not know how long they would be held. "We were questioned separately by police and they took our passports away," said Kierstan Westby of Boulder, Colo.

She said they displayed the banner for about 30 minutes before local authorities took them away. "We are hoping they take us to the border and let us go," she said. Attempts to call her later were unsuccessful.

The fourth protester was Tenzin Dorjee, a Tibetan-American who lives in New York. It was the first demonstration inside Tibet by a Tibetan, who grew up in exile, said Kate Woznow, of Students for a Free Tibet, in New York City - the group that planned the protest.

The group unfurled their banner inside the 17,400 foot elevation base came where the Chinese national climbing team was preparing to ascend the mountain with a replica of the Olympic Torch to see if it could be ignited successfully at the summit of 29,035 foot high Everest.

Woznow said that Dorjee first sang the Tibetan National Anthem, holding another replica of the torch, calling it the Tibetan Freedom Torch.

The International Olympic Committee plans to announce the route for the Olympic torch relay on Thursday [ 26 April 2007].

"The International Olympic Committee has no business promoting the Chinese government's political agenda by allowing the torch to be run through Tibet," said Students for a Free Tibet executive director Lhadon Tethong.

Hein Verbruggen, head of the IOC Coordination Commission overseeing the Beijing Games, tried to stay above the fray. "We don't want to be, as the IOC, involved in any political issues," Verbruggen said. "It's not our task. We are here for organizing the Games."

Tethong said Students for a Free Tibet has 650 chapters in more than 30 countries and has about 20,000 members. U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Susan Stevenson said privacy laws prevented her from commenting on the detentions.

The Consulate General of the People's Republic of China was not reached for comment.