Michael Liss ’91 likened his experience this summer in a Chinese interrogation room to “exactly like a cop show.” This August during the Beijing Olympics, Liss was temporarily sentenced to prison for protesting for the liberation of Tibet from Chinese occupation. Liss came to campus last Friday as the first visitor in the Alumni Roundtable Dinner program. To an audience of current students and faculty in the Mural Room, Liss retold the story of his protest in Beijing. Since 1950, the People’s Republic of China has claimed ownership of Tibet, a region that is by and large culturally distinct from mainland Chna. Liss and other activists from Students for a Free Tibet, an organization devoted to Tibetan sovereignty, originally planned to beam a laser image of the phrase “Free Tibet” onto a Beijing skyscraper. They planned to project the phrase “Free Tibet” onto the China Central Television (CCTV) Tower using a laser stencil, which can project a message from up to a mile away. However, before they carried out their plan, the activists first tested out the laser technology by projecting the phrase “Free Beer” onto a road in Beijing. They stationed the laser from a bar in the city. When the activists left the bar, Liss hailed a taxi and told the driver how to return to his hotel. Liss said that the next thing he knew, people had surrounded him and had taken him to a holding room in the Beijing Capital International Airport. From that Monday night until Friday, the six prisoners had no idea what was going on, Liss said. He and the students only met with interrogators and translators. “Basically I spent the first three hours lying my butt off,” said Liss. The Chinese authorities had full records of everything the activists said in the bar the night they were caught. Interrogators asked Liss many different questions, including his favorite questions: “What does ‘Free Beer’ mean? What does ‘Free Beer’ mean for human rights?” When the interrogators released the activists, they flew to Los Angeles International Airport, then to JFK International in New York, where they ended their adventure. Although the protestors never were able to project “Free Tibet” on to the CCTV Tower, China gave the team the win they needed the most. By arresting the six of them, China turned the activists’ small plan into major media. “You can do something, and you can have an effect,” said Liss. “You just never know when you set out to do something what’ll happen.” Lots of planning took place before the group traveled to Beijing. Some of the activists used code names such as “earthmouse” and “mommabear77,” as well as encrypted e-mail services and cell phones. Everyone involved in the operation called it “The Baltimore Project.” Students for a Free Tibet (SFT) positioned men and women all over the world to make sure the activists in Beijing were safe. Seventy-five people traveled to Beijing, where they were split into smaller groups, each with different tasks. There was no communication between the groups so as to eliminate the possibility of compromising other groups. Liss has always been fascinated by Tibet, he said. He first visited Tibet in 2004, and described the region as a “deep, beautiful ancient country.” Before Beijing, Liss took part in other SFT protests at locations such as the Tibet base camp of Mount Everest, on the Great Wall of China and on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. Students for a Free Tibet is based in New York. Playing off the slogan of the Beijing Olympics, SFT came up with the slogan “One World, One Dream, Free Tibet” for their campaign. According to the their website, Students for a Free Tibet was founded in 1994. Now, the organization is comprised of over 650 chapters in more than 35 countries. Michael Liss hosted the first of many Alumni Roundtable Dinners this year, which are open to all Seniors. Matt Noyes ’96, a meteorologist from the New England Cable News, will tell his story at the next dinner on Saturday, November 17.
