Yesterday in London the Olympic torch relay turned into a demolition derby. Protesters repeatedly threw themselves at runners and tried to grab the flame, only to be wrestled to the ground by police and the phalanx of Chinese flame-minders who ringed each torch-bearer. More than 30 protesters (out of thousands) were arrested.
A few reactions: The Times says the relay “was reduced to farce and ignominy” as “ugly scenes of protest disrupted the London leg of the tour that was billed as a journey of harmony and peace.” On TV this morning, a police spokesman said he thought things went very well, because the vast majority of protesters behaved lawfully. The BBC’s sports editor, Mihir Bose, commented that rowdy protests are part of what makes a democracy a democracy, but also noted that the repeated scuffles along the route diminished everyone — runners, police, protesters, and the Olympic movement. I have to agree: the sight of a grown man charging at a 90-pound children’s television host and trying to twist the flame from her hand didn’t, to my mind, help elevate the cause of human rights in Tibet.
And what about the police response?
In some cases the Metropolitan Police appeared heavy-handed. Yonten Ngama, a Tibet-born care home worker, was asked by police at Wembley to remove a T-shirt that declared: “China Stop the Killing.” Minutes before he was arrested, he said: “It is difficult to protest. China is powerful also in the UK.”
Five-time Olympic gold medalist Steve Redgrave, the first torchbearer yesterday, was asked beforehand about boycotting the relay, or even the Beijing games. With deadpan cynicism he said he’d consider it — the day the government and global business announce they’re pulling out of China to protest its human rights record.
And so we go to Beijing, where the BBC reports that not one moment of torch-relay discord was shown to the public. On a downtown Jumbo-tron, the evening news speaks of socialist harmony and great advances in tractor deployment. Correspondent James Reynolds says, “Every night, from on high, the Communist party delivers the news.”
And so it does, as shown in the photo above. Just one question.
When, exactly, did the golden arches become the symbol of the PRC?
2 responses so far ↓
Ken // April 8, 2008 at 8:43 am
Anybody who thinks that protesting the passage of the Olympic flame will bring any pressure to bear on the Chinese, or convince their own government to institute any punitive measures against China is living in a fool’s paradise.
curly // April 8, 2008 at 12:26 pm
It was a Black day for Gordon Brown and the UK govt.
Who authorised the use of Chinese security personnel in London?
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