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California pastor sent home after daring hotel stunt

Written by Michael Ireland, Assist News Service

Tuesday, 26 August 2008

BEIJING, CHINA (ANS) -- Eddie Perez Romero, the La Puente, California pastor who carried out a daring human rights protest in hotel rooms in Beijing during the Olympic Games, is on his way home after being arrested by Chinese authorities.

Romero was taken into custody near Tiananmen Square during a human rights protest and ordered out of the country by Chinese authorities after coming out of hiding following the closing ceremonies. He was put aboard a San Francisco-bound airplane, his daughter said Monday. "We know he is flying into San Francisco and from there he's going to try and take a Southwest flight into L.A.," said his daughter, Sarah Yetter. She said she expected him to arrive in Los Angeles today in the late afternoon or early evening.

According to Greg Johnson, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer, the U.S. Embassy in Beijing helped locate Romero after his arrest and apparently helped him get out of the country, said Tony Thomas, Romero's spokesman in La Puente.

"The Chinese have destroyed all his papers, his passport, everything," Thomas said. "So we're not sure what happens when he gets to San Francisco."

One of the two Beijing hotel rooms Romero redecorated
Johnson reports that Romero's one-man protest began Aug. 7 when he allegedly vandalized two upscale hotel rooms not far from venues for the Beijing Olympic Games. He painted Bible verses and anti-Beijing slogans on the walls and beamed video of his actions back to the U.S. via the Internet.

Romero managed to alert at least two Beijing-based foreign reporters, who wrote about the protest and published pictures of the marked walls.

The Los Angeles Times says Romero is believed to have hidden in a rural area outside Beijing for the next two weeks before resurfacing at the historic square shortly after the Games' closing ceremony.

The newspaper reported that Romero managed to talk to passersby there and shout out his demands before being escorted out of Tiananmen Square and into a security car. He had been demanding that Beijing free five political and religious prisoners and sign a U.N. human rights accord.