US News
Olympics torch protests begin in San Francisco
Apr 8, 2008, 22:30 GMT
Three Demonstrators scaled the Golden Gate Bridge unfurling two banners in San Francisco, California, USA, 07 April 2008. EPA/MONICA M. DAVEY
Protestors lit what they called the Tibetan Freedom Torch in San Francisco on Tuesday as the city prepared for a day of anti-China protests to greet the carrying of the Olympic torch Wednesday.
Police have called in reinforcements and officials are considering changing the torch's route to prevent a repeat of the mayhem caused by protestors in London and Paris.
Later Tuesday a second demonstration was planned, to be led by actor Richard Gere and archbishop Desmond Tutu.
City Supervisor Chris Daley lit the Tibetan Freedom Torch calling on citizens to greet the Olympic torch 'in a nonviolent yet most militant way.' Other officials at the demonstration called on protestors not to disrupt the Olympic torch relay.
The Olympic torch arrived in San Francisco early Tuesday with hundreds of police officers on hand for security, and the pre-dawn arrival at the airport minimized protests.
The procession through the Pacific coast city is the torch's only stop in the US on its strife-ridden journey around the globe ahead of the 2008 Beijing Games in August.
According to reports Tuesday in the US, Olympic officials are considering cancelling future legs of the tour in the face of demonstrations in London and Paris. The next stop is scheduled for Buenos Aires on Friday.
In New York the United Nations special advisor on sport warned that the effect of continued demonstrations could be devastating to the image of the Olympics and said he would travel to China to try and reduce tensions.
'My wish is to de-escalate the conflict,' Willi Lemke, a former Bundesliga manager, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa. 'If these pictures (of the torch relay) continue to go round the world until August, nobody will be happy about the Olympic Games, and that would be devastating.'
In San Francisco on Monday, activists scaled the Golden Gate Bridge to protest China's crackdown in Tibet.
San Francisco police have cancelled all leave for Wednesday's planned 10-kilometer relay along the city's waterfront. The prospect of mass protests led at least one runner to withdraw from the event, local reports said.
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom met with the Chinese ambassador to discuss security and said that the scenes in London and Paris 'obviously play a part in our security approach and will play a part in terms of our making any final decisions (on the route),' the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
'This is not a contained route, security-wise, and there are lots of opportunities for trouble,' added sergeant Neville Gittens, a spokesman for the San Francisco police. 'We are watching what's going on very closely and will make changes to our plans as we figure them out.'
Senator Hillary Clinton, the US senator seeking the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, has called for US President George W Bush to boycott the opening ceremony in Beijing.
In Washington Tuesday, White House spokesperson Dana Perino indicated Bush would likely attend, saying the president's position was that the Olympics 'should be about the athletes and not necessarily about politics.'
China has condemned the pro-Tibet protests at the torch relays in Paris and London and said it hoped such scenes would not recur. Eighteen protestors were arrested in Paris earlier this week.
The spokeswoman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Jiang Yu, said Tuesday that Beijing hopes that through cooperation with the US, the torch relay will be 'secure, successful and smooth.'
The Olympic torch was extinguished three times Monday in Paris as thousands of anti-China protesters disrupted its passage through the French capital.
'Their despicable activities tarnish the lofty Olympic spirit and challenge all the people loving the Olympic Games around the world,' Jiang said.
China got a rare measure of support from the Venezuelan government Tuesday, which denounced the campaign of 'insults' against China and promised to send to Beijing its largest Olympic delegation ever.
'(Venezuela) expresses its total and unrestricted solidarity with the government and the people of the People's Republic of China in the face of the unceasing and systematic campaign of insults ... (by) large mass communications companies,' the statement said.
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Older Talkback
page: 1
China should send all of the tibetans to the US reservation...Why because it seems to be working for the Europeans.
It is not surprising that the Dalia lama's clique of rich actors choose to attempt to ruin one of the few events that the world celebrates in concord together, the individual spirit's power to unite us with their victories. We share with enthusiasm and bask in the light of their achievements.
The Olympics began in the cradle of western democracy principles and ideals.
Tibetan never experienced any thing remotely resembling democracy under the 14 Dalia lamas over the last 350 years. He devised a slave, serf medieval class structure that rode on the backs of the Tibetan people for far too long. It was the PRC that liberated the people of Tibet.
This Dalia lama is no different now after 49 years than his peredcesspors.
Only last month before he incited the rioting in Tibet.
The Dalia lama threw out a 350 year old respected order of the Tthe Tibetan Mahayana Gulug lineage of Dorje Shugden into the streets of India.
Thousands of the clergy are now confronted by Tibetan Vigilante ggons to harass them out of the Colonies. Why?
He wears two mantles of authority that tread daily on our Founding Father's principles of equality and freedom of speech and religion. He He does not adhere to our Bill Of Rights.Nor would he know what to dowit them in his government in exile.
The western news reporting is as blind to the history of the Dalia lama as are the Free Tibet people are. Free to go back to a free Tibet that never existed except as a medieval time warp in a despots mind.
Why should Bush skip the games, aside from a short attention span that might see him falling asleep in the slower stretches? Bush will be right among friends in Beijing. Given his use, and defense of torture as policy, and his confinement of prisoners in offshore prisons without charges, legal representation, trial, or even access to the Red Cross, Bush will most certainly fit in. We may bristle at the idea of a U.S. president not making a statement against China's miserable human rights record, but our record--the one most Americans studiously ignore--is so spotty, whatever we could say to China would only cause China to laugh. We have almost no influence over China, and whatever we do have will diminish over time, for a variety of reasons. We still, at least in theory, have influence over our own government and its policies, and we should start to focus our efforts on reforming that out of control beast, which is increasingly the single worst threat to our liberties, and peace around the world.
'Thomas Canada'
LOL, like you are not a chi-com.
In my humble opinion the Tibetans are not bringing the right idea to their cause. They are going about it all wrong. I am disgusted with them. The Olympics are a sporting event and sports should not be mixed with politics. The fact that they are trying to do that shows that politically they have no chance in hell and thats why their desperate acts of violent demonstrations. In case you bozoos are wondering I am not Chinese but Venezuelan and support Hugo Chavez' decision to speak up on China's behalf.
When some people claimed that 1.2M Tibetans were killed, I have to tell them, yes, 1.2M died, but they were not men or women though, they were semen; when some people thought Tibet was an independent country, then I have to tell them, maybe it was, but that was before the concept of a country was born; when some people believed that the criminals who burned the innocent girls to death and beat the bystanders to death only wanted their voices to be heard, I have to tell them, yes, their voices were heard, but won't be anymore.
Over the last 60 years over 1.2 million Tibetans have been massacred in cold blood by the Chinese military. Why has the world remained silent? Why?
China's human rights abuses are 'staggering': the detention of hundreds of thousands of people, including political activists, for 'reeducation' programs, and forced labor camps; and the liberal use of the death penalty in China -- including for political prisoners -- which makes China the site of 8 of every 10 government administered executions carried out in the world!
It is clear that the Communists can't be trusted at all and they have a bag full of tricks to fool not only Tibetans but the people of China with a state-controlled press. The solution is a free Tibet. There is no doubt that a sovereign Tibet would be a savior state not only for Tibetans but for all ethnic groups of China who have nowhere to go if they disagree with the CCP. A free Tibet would be such a free democratic heaven and haven.
page: 1
LynneApr 9th, 2008 - 00:41:14
Hugo Chavez is once again on the wrong side of right.
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