A 13-year-old US boy campaigning to turn the demilitarised zone between North and South Korea into a peace park tried to get the Chinese Presidents attention on Monday,by staging a brief protest near Tiananmen Square before being led away by the police. Jonathan Lee unfurled a sign saying peace treaty and nuclear free DMZ childrens peace forest as he stood outside Tiananmen,or the Gate of Heavenly Peace,in central Beijing. Less than a minute later,a man presumed to be a plainclothes police officer grabbed Lees sign and waved away watching journalists,who had been contacted by Lees family ahead of time. Three or four uniformed police officers then hurriedly escorted Lee and his mother away without commotion. The police held the pair and a few hours later Lee and his mother,Melissa Lee,returned to their hotel. Then,the two,as well as the boys father and sister checked out of their rooms at the Courtyard Marriott,a hotel receptionist said. Joel Clark,a documentary filmmaker who travelled to China with the Lees,said an e-mail he received from the boys mother suggested that they had been told to leave China. They escorted us here to the hotel and we are free to leave . today, Clark quoted the e-mail as saying. Police are waiting downstairs. The boy,from Ridgeland,Mississippi,is trying to persuade the leaders of North and South Korea,China and the US to work for reunification of the two Koreas. Hopefully my picketing will touch them in a way,so theyll really consider peace between North and South Korea, Lee said in an interview Friday with the documentary filmmaker. I guess Im just trying to do,you know,what God would want,making peace. His father,Kyoung Lee,said in a statement that his son has sent letters to President Barack Obama and South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak but had not been able to give a letter to Chinese President Hu Jintao. This made the Tiananmen protest necessary.
