Protesters outside City Hall by Ed Ou/AP.
With the Beijing detainees now out of reach of the Chinese government, they're doing some talking. Animal spoke with New Yorker Jeffrey Goldin last night, one of the ten American activists released earlier this week. Like James Powderly, Goldin was also taken in V for Vendetta-style, but he goes further into the details about the 2 a.m. wake up call, saying the eight secret police were asking a lot of questions about “Earth Mouse."
Goldin had met with Powderly and the others earlier in the day in Beijing to discuss the high tech L.A.S.E.R. protest, but eventually trouble came. "That's the night they picked us up." After being taken to a basement of a hotel and interrogated one by one in conference rooms, the six were then put in vans and told they were going to be deported. However, the mini-caravan drove past the airport and continued on, straight to a prison.
"There was a metal chair with a metal belt that they actually strapped you down to." One of the most pressing questions the interrogators repeatedly asked them was "who is Earth Mouse?"
While he denied knowing anything about this Earth Mouse character (during the 6-10 hour interrogations a day), Goldin says he was the guy that wasn't in China, "helping coordinate and organize the Students for A Free Tibet's actions via Twitter."In the end, they were released early and receieved all of their personal belongings back (you know, besides their cash and digital cameras), and their credit cards were charged $2,000 each--all in all the NY Sun reports about $20,000 stolen from the group. Powderly also told the paper, "They threatened our lives, threatened the lives of people we know, of our family members, and they told us that they could get us, even outside of China." At LAX they were greeted by embraces from 4 monks, and 40 women dressed in traditional Tibetan garb.
