"klunk" (klunk@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
) writes:
> Bush claims the games should be about the athletes and not politics....
> WRONG... politics gave birth to the Olympic games thousands of years
ago...
> EVERY country and city hosting the torch relay should encourage and
> publicize their sup****t for the end of chinese government atrocities...
and
> the games are a perfect forum for getting this message across to them...
if
> they wish to celebrate their greatness to the world, then they should
get
> the **** out of Tibet...
> imho... ;-)
(K): This was an issue - and a protest - just waiting for the Beijing
Games.
Good on Britain for the protests they held against the torch runners from
China.
And good on France for their protests as well. Good footage here:
http://www.reuters.com/news/pictures/articleslideshow?articleId=USSP23296420080407&channelName=worldNews#a=8
and video:
http://www.reuters.com/news/video?videoId=79706&newsChannel=worldNews
________________________________________
Canwest - Monday, April 07, 2008
Protesters complicate Olympic torch relay
PARIS - China's bid to enhance its international stature by hosting the
2008 Olympics was smacked with another setback Monday as thousands of
French demonstrators overcame a massive police presence to repeatedly
disrupt the Olympic torch relay through Paris's angry streets.
Protesters chanting "Free Tibet" clashed, sometimes violently, with
heavily armoured police officers and pro-China sup****ters in a daylong
torch relay event that is traditionally supposed to symbolize
international solidarity and peace.
"They don't understand," said a saddened Jing Hu, clutching pro-Olympic
flags with each hand, as she looked on with frustration at demonstrations
in front of the Hotel de Ville (City Hall) from her vantage point on the
historic Pont Notre-Dame that traverses the Seine River.
"This is a day about s****ts and about peace. Why are they making
this about politics?" said the 25-year-old economics student who lives in
Paris.
He and other Chinese students interviewed Monday refused to comment on the
main point of the demonstration - China's violent crackdown on dissent in
Tibet - because they said she doesn't know enough about events there.
A few moments later, Parisian social worker Benjamin Simonet, 30, calmly
explained the protest's rationale while holding a protest sign with one
hand and a cigarette in the other, in front of the Hotel de Ville.
He was standing before the huge banner installed on the Hotel de Ville at
the insistence of Mayor Bernard Delanoe, declaring Paris's commitment to
international human rights.
China, Simonet said, was obliged as the Olympic host to improve its human
rights record.
"It's not the case so here is a demonstration to say: 'We are vigilant.'"
A prominent Chinese human rights activist says the international pressure,
which is growing in Europe as displayed by the demonstrations against the
torch relay Monday in Paris and Sunday in London, helps protect political
dissidents in China.
"The human rights situation would be much worse" without the pressure, Liu
Xiaobo told the German news magazine Der Spiegel, one of Europe's most
influential publications.
But Xiaobo, in an interview published in the magazine's online edition
Monday, said activists pu****ng for an Olympic boycott would, if
successful, actually worsen the rights situation.
"That wouldn't be a good way to punish China," he said.
"If the Games fail, human rights will suffer. The government would stop
paying any attention to the rest of the world. I personally think: We want
the Games and we want human rights to be respected."
Xiaobo dismissed the notion that the games are, for China, just about
s****ts and peace.
He said China wanted the Games as a way of boosting China's prestige
internationally as well as to stir up patriotic sentiment after the 1989
Tiananmen Square killings.
The Chinese government's "legitimacy was seriously weakened. The party was
desperate to boost patriotism," he told Der Spiegel.
"For the party, the Beijing Games are the biggest political happening of
2008. Everything revolves around them."
On Paris streets the Olympic flame had to be extinguished several times
and placed in a bus to avoid demonstrations, and was finally trans****ted
by bus to a south Paris stadium for its final stop.
Numerous demonstrators were arrested and hauled off in police vans,
eliciting howls that police were showing the same disrespect for
democratic values shown by Chinese authorities.
"They were grabbing people and ripping the flags out of their hands," said
Paris-based Canadian freelance photographer Peter Falkner, who was ordered
by one police officer to stop taking pictures.
In China, meanwhile, the official media mentioned the demonstrations in
London Sunday - they ignored the protesters in Greece when the flame was
ignited - but mostly just in passing.
The headline on the front of the China Daily read: "Warm reception in cold
London."
The story said "Olympic fever gripped snowy London" as the torch passed
through the city and only deep in the story did it mention protesters. The
reference was carefully worded, however, and left the impression that the
25 people London police originally arrested for disrupting the relay might
have been the only protesters at the event.
They were, however, "no deterrent to thousands of Londoners and a large
number of Chinese working or studying (in London) who packed the streets
and cheered the torch on its way around the city," the paper said.
Shanghai Daily headlined the protesters, but again managed to convey the
impression that only about 25 people were involved instead of the many
hundreds other media re****ted.
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In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary
act.
-- George Orwell
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