Beijing tightens security ahead of Olympic torch arrival
Beijing tightened security today ahead of the Olympic torch’s arrival after demonstrations by protesters during its passage through Greece.
Greek officials handed over the Olympic flame to organisers of the Beijing Games in Athens amid small protests by a pro-Tibetan group.
Protesters at the marble Panathenian Stadium chanted “Save Tibet” and unfurled a banner that read “Stop Genocide in Tibet.”
Twenty-one demonstrators were detained – seven Indians, a Nepalese and 13 Greeks – and were all to be released without charge, police said.
The torch was expected to arrive in Beijing early tomorrow aboard an Air China flight, allowing the government a brief respite before the relay sets off on a problematic, month-long world tour.
Authorities have given few details about a torch ceremony at Tiananmen Square, the heart of China’s capital.
The flame will then be taken by an unidentified Chinese torchbearer, state media said. The Beijing Youth Daily said it could be famed Chinese hurdler Liu Xiang, although this had not been confirmed.
The flame goes on Tuesday to Almaty, Kazakhstan, at the start of the 20-country, 85,000-mile global journey with protests expected in several major cities.
The grandiose relay is the longest in Olympic history and has the most torchbearers, a sign of the vast attention lavished on the Games by China’s government, which hopes to use it to showcase China’s rising economic and political power.
Instead, however, it has provided a stage for human rights activists who have been criticising China over a range of issues including its handling of Muslims in the far west of the country, its control over Tibet and its relationship with Sudan.
It has especially focused attention on recent unrest in Tibet, the worst in the Chinese-controlled region since 1989.
Dozens of Tibetan exiles burned an effigy of China President Hu Jintao as they reached the Indian capital of New Delhi today, carrying a symbolic flame which they said was running parallel to the official torch for the Beijing Olympic games.
“Long live the Dalai Lama,” and “Stop killings in Tibet,” they chanted during a protest demonstration close to India’s Parliament. The Dalai Lama, Tibetans’ exiled spiritual leader, is based in India.
Beijing’s relay was tarnished before it even began when a demonstrator protesting Chinese media curbs grabbed headlines last week by disrupting a Chinese official’s opening address at the lighting ceremony in Greece.
That was followed across Greece by a smattering of protests by activists protesting a crackdown on dissent in Tibet and members of the Falun Gong spiritual movement, which is banned in China and relentlessly persecuted.
