Scottish Free Tibet activist Iain Thom joined a protest march within hours of arriving home yesterday as anti-China demonstrations took place around the world to coincide with the start of the Olympic Games.
The 24-year-old hugged his sister Aileen, 21, at Waverley Station in Edinburgh where a dozen friends and colleagues presented him with a chocolate "gold Olympic medal".
Speaking after his coup in beating security to stage a protest outside Beijing's Bird's Nest Stadium, he revealed he was about to join Tibetan friends marching to the Scottish Parliament.
He said: "I'm really pleased to be back in Scotland and to see my friends and I will be joining the march after this.
"I'm going to go home to my parents over the weekend and I'm going to take some rest and then get back to work. There is a lot more to do in this campaign."
The Edinburgh-based environmental charity worker admitted that after being deported and banned from China for five years following his protest he wouldn't be returning "anytime soon".
He joined around 20 people who gathered at the parliament yesterday afternoon for the peaceful protest march.
In London a noisy 200-strong mob of demonstrators from Tibet, Zimbabwe, Sudan and Burma gathered outside the Chinese Embassy to voice their anger at China's human rights record.
Huge flags were waved by the raucous crowd as protesters chanted "free Tibet".
Liawang Tsang, who fled Tibet with his family nine years ago in order to escape from the Chinese regime, was among the crowd.
He said: "We are here together today because we need the Chinese government to talk about human rights, the situation in Tibet and media freedom.
"It's not only Tibetans here but Sudanese, Burmese.
"The Olympics shouldn't have been offered to China on the basis of their human rights record, but from this there have been positives as the attention of the world is now on China and their human rights record is in the spotlight."
