The following story about Nicole Rycroft, Executive Director of Markets Initiative and Endswell Foundation grantee, is from Linda Solomon's article in the Vancouver Observer.

Nicole Rycroft  and another activist representing Students for a Free Tibet are pictured above earlier today in Beijing on top of a billboard reading: Beijing 2008. Rycroft and the other activist unfurled a banner that said: "Free Tibet." It remained in place for a half an hour, before authorities removed it and arrested the activists, Mel Raoul, a member of Students for a Free Tibet said tonight. Rycroft is currently being detained.

Before her arrest, Rycroft explained in an email to friends why she was risking being detained:

You know me as one of Canada’s leading environmental activists and social entrepreneurs, but before I moved to Canada and founded Markets Initiative I did war zone human rights work in Burma. Knowing this you may be a little less surprised when you find out that I am currently under arrest in China for having protested the ongoing human rights abuses of Tibetans. I participated in a peaceful direct action in Beijing where I unfurled a large banner from one of the Olympic promotional billboards with a number of other pro-Tibet sympathizers.

I hope to be back safe and sound in Canada, running my organization very soon. Even more I hope that the people in Tibet can practice their culture, live without fear of reprisal and live in freedom and peace. Part of this peace will be the right to a government of their choice and an assurance that their sacred spaces are not being despoiled for resource extraction to feed China’s industrial machinery.

As many of you already know, I was an elite athlete (rower) in Australia in the 1990’s. Little did I know, when I was training to be in the Olympics, that my principles would take me to “the games of peace”, to act more directly for peace outside the stadium walls.

For me, China holding this important event, while practicing such egregious human rights abuses, is beyond irony. I feel strongly that I have a responsibility, as a former athlete, and a person of conscience, to put as much towards my principles as I once did towards my training.

This is what my heart beats for. I’ll communicate again once I am released back to Canada.

In peace,

Nicole

Raoul described the "action" as follows:

"They climbed a billboard that was advertising the Beijing 2008 games which was right in front of CCTV, the main television network for China. Five activists were involved in the action, Nicole and a British man climbed over the edge of the billboard and unfurled a banner.

"They found an access point and managed to get to the top of it. They climbed over the edge and rappelled down the billboard. Both of the climbers had Tibet flags on their backs.

"They were on the billboard for about 30 minutes, Raoul said.