You are currently browsing the daily archive for April 10th, 2008.
[From Students for a Free Tibet]
The Chinese authorities appear to have U-turned on plans to allow foreigners back into Tibet next month amid fears that protesters could disrupt the Olympic flame’s trip to the summit of Everest.
Their decision comes in the wake of demonstrations which have dogged the torch relay on its passage through London, Paris and San Francisco and look set to continue in other cities.
The flame’s trip to the top of the world’s highest mountain has been described by the Chinese organisers as one of the highlights of its tour – and by Tibetan support groups overseas as its most contentious stop. They argue that it symbolises China’s control of the region.
Tibet’s tourism authority announced last week that the region would reopen to foreign holidaymakers on May 1, having been closed to non-Chinese travellers since riots broke out in Lhasa in mid-March.
But today travel agents said the bureau had ordered them to stop arranging such trips, citing the need to secure safe passage for the Olympic torch relay to Everest in early May.
While the main flame continues its journey around the world, another flame was taken from the lighting ceremony in Beijing to Tibet because experts predicted the best conditions for an ascent would be next month.
Officials had closed the north face of Everest before last month’s riots began – citing environmental concerns – and persuaded Nepal to block access. Many believe they fear a repeat of last year’s protest by five US mountaineers, who unfurled banners calling for Tibetan independence.
An employee at the Tibet China Youth Travel Service, based in Lhasa, told the Associated Press news agency: “We received the emergency notice from the tourism bureau that, considering the safety of the torch which will go
to Mount Everest in May, agencies are not allowed to receive tourist groups and foreign tourists.”
He added that the government’s decision would hurt Tibet’s burgeoning tourism industry, but that he expected trips to resume after the torch relay to Everest.
An employee of the Tibetan Tourism Bureau confirmed that changes have been made to the original decision to reopen the region.
Yesterday, Tibet’s governor, Qiangba Puncog told a press conference: “For these separatist forces, the Olympics in Beijing will be a rare opportunity.
“I don’t doubt they will create trouble during the torch relay in Tibet,” he said.
The main torch will also pass through Tibet in June, on its way back to Beijing for the opening ceremony of the games.
The People’s Armed Police (PAP) newspaper reported today that commanders have ordered the force to ensure “internal security and stability” for the Olympics as well as tackle terrorist threats.
The PAP has led the crackdown on riots in Lhasa and protests in other parts of China with large Tibetan populations.
Commanders called the security tasks highly “political and sensitive”, and stressed that Chinese President Hu Jintao had made security concerns a top priority for a successful Olympics.
The paper last week issued a “political mobilisation order” to PAP troops telling them to prepare for an arduous time ensuring order and control before and during the games.
Journalists have been prevented from entering areas where unrest has taken place – except for a handful allowed on to strictly limited state-organised tours – despite a special law allowing them to travel outside Beijing without notifying the authorities in the run up to the Olympics.
But Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee, said this morning he had pressed Beijing to fully implement the new regulations.
Speaking after a meeting with the Chinese premier, Wen Jiabao, Rogge said: “We know the implementation of this [media] law is not perfect, there are shortcomings. I have asked the authorities to implement the media law in full … and I have insisted this must be done as soon as possible.”
Separate restrictions still apply to reporting in Tibet.
BEIJING – Crisis. Disarray. Sadness. Four months before the opening of what was supposed to be the grandest Olympics in history, the head of the International Olympic Committee is using words that convey anything but a sense of joyous enthusiasm.
The protest-marred Olympic torch relay and international criticism of China’s policies on Tibet, Darfur and human rights have turned the Beijing Games into one of the most politically charged in recent history and presented the IOC with one of its toughest tests since the boycott era of the 1970s and ’80s.
“It is a crisis, there is no doubt about that,” IOC President Jacques Rogge said Thursday. “But the IOC has weathered many bigger storms.”
At the same time, Rogge called on China to respect its “moral engagement” to improve human rights and to fulfill promises of greater media freedom. He also reaffirmed the right of free speech for athletes at the Beijing Games.
Rogge spoke in Beijing just hours after the completion of the torch relay in San Francisco, where the route was shortened and the flame diverted to prevent disruptions by massive crowds of anti-China protesters.
Rogge’s use of the word “crisis” to describe the torch relay and the Beijing buildup came as a surprise. The Belgian orthopedic surgeon’s comments usually are measured and low-key.
He cited previous crises — the attack on Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics and the boycotts of the 1976, 1980 and 1984 Games.
“The history of the Olympic Games is fraught by a lot of challenges,” Rogge said. “This is a challenge but you cannot compare to what we had in the past.”
British IOC member Craig Reedie believes the worst is over.
“I hope that we are through it now,” he said. “I think the furor that has affected the torch in London, Paris and to some extent in San Francisco will now die down. … But it is fair to say that this kind of political protest is a new experience for the IOC and we have all found it extremely uncomfortable.”
After the chaos caused by pro-Tibet demonstrators during torch relays in London and Paris, IOC officials were relieved the North American leg passed without any injuries.
“Fortunately, the situation was better in San Francisco,” Rogge said. “It was, however, not the joyous party that we had wished it to be.
“Athletes in many countries are in disarray and we need to reassure them,” he added. “Our major responsibility is to offer them the games they deserve. … We have 120 days to achieve this.”
Earlier in the week, IOC officials had contemplated possibly cutting short the international leg of the relay, but Rogge said Thursday that was not an option.
“This scenario is definitely not on the agenda,” he said. “We are studying together with (Beijing organizers) to improve the torch relay, but there is no scenario of either interrupting or bringing (the torch) back directly to Beijing.”
That doesn’t mean, however, that local officials still might not shorten existing routes if security demands it.
Already, the head of the committee organizing the torch run in Indonesia said the route will be significantly shortened because of Chinese concerns it might attract pro-Tibet protests.
The relay, scheduled for April 22, was originally planned to follow a 10-mile course in Jakarta, but now it will only travel in the vicinity of the city’s main sports stadium, said Sumohadi Marsis, the head of the organizing committee.
Hong Kong Chief Secretary for Administration Henry Tang said officials many tweak the torch relay route to ensure order when the flame arrives April 30. He said 3,000 police will be deployed.
Hong Kong newspapers reported Wednesday that officials may shorten the route and are considering transporting the torch to its next stop, the nearby gambling enclave of Macau, by plane instead of by boat to avoid protests at sea.
“We will constantly re-examine and improve the route so that the torch relay is smooth, safe, orderly and dignified,” Tang said.
The flame will be carried through Buenos Aires, Argentina, on Friday, with a dozen other countries still to come. The relay also is expected to face demonstrations in New Delhi, India, which has a substantial Tibetan population, and possibly elsewhere on its 21-stop tour before arriving in mainland China on May 4. The Olympics begin Aug. 8.
Rogge said he had assurances from Beijing organizers that all measures were being taken to ensure the torch’s “safe passage.”
The future of international torch relays is in serious doubt, however. Rogge said “all options are open” for future games, including restricting the relays to the territory of the host country, a policy favored by a large number of IOC members. Athens, in 2004, was the first host city to organize a global relay.
Rogge said the issue would be reviewed later in the year — “not in the heat of this week’s events.”
Rogge, who has come under pressure from critics to speak out on China, was asked whether he had second thoughts about awarding the games to Beijing seven years ago.
“I’ve said that it is very easy with hindsight to criticize the decision,” he said. “It’s easy to say now that this was not a wise and a sound decision.”
But Rogge insisted Beijing had “clearly the best bid” and offered the strong pull of taking the Olympics to a country with one-fifth of the world’s population.
“That was the reasoning for awarding the bid to Beijing.”
When Beijing was seeking the games, Rogge noted, Chinese officials said the Olympics would help advance social change, including human rights. He called that a “moral engagement” and stressed there was no “contractual promise whatsoever” on human rights in the official host city contract.
“I would definitely ask China to respect this moral engagement,” Rogge said, in one of his most pointed comments on the subject.
A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman responded that IOC officials support adhering to the Olympic Charter and “not bringing any irrelevant political factors into the Beijing Olympics.”
“I hope the IOC officials will continue to adhere to the principles set by the Olympic charter,” Jiang Yu said.
Rogge reported having “very frank and open discussions” with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao on a range of Olympic issues Wednesday. He declined to elaborate.
Rogge insisted that “a number of important points have been met” on human rights, including a new Chinese law enacted in 2007 that removed many restrictions on foreign journalists. But he said the law had not been fully implemented and he was urging Chinese officials to do so “as soon as possible.”
Rogge refused to be drawn on the prospect of top world leaders snubbing the Beijing opening ceremony. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and German Chancellor Angela Merkel will not be attending the opening, and French President Nicolas Sarkozy is considering staying away. U.S. Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton have called on President Bush to boycott the ceremony.
“Politicians have to make their decisions themselves,” Rogge said. “The IOC will not intervene in this matter.”
Rogge sought to reassure athletes that they are free to express their political opinions — as long as they do so away from official Olympic venues in Beijing.
Rogge said free expression has been enshrined in the Olympic Charter for more than 40 years as a “basic human right.” However, the charter also forbids any “demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda” in any Olympic sites or venues.
“I’m very clear on the fact that athletes have ample opportunities to express themselves without hindrance, but just by respecting the sacred environment of the Olympic village, the Olympic venues the podium and so forth,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Dalai Lama said he is willing to support the Beijing Olympics, but China cannot suppress protests in Tibet with violence or tell those calling for more freedom in his homeland “to shut up.”
During a stopover in Japan on his way to the United States, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader strongly denied Chinese allegations he and his followers have been fomenting unrest before the Olympics. He said he has supported China’s hosting the Olympics from the start.
“Right from the beginning, we supported the Olympic Games,” he told reporters in Japan. “I really feel very sad the government demonizes me. I am just a human; I am not a demon.”
The Dalai Lama, who has lived in India since a failed 1959 uprising in Tibet, said he would even like to attend the opening ceremony if the Tibetan crisis is resolved. “If things improve and the Chinese government starts to see things realistically, I personally want to enjoy the big ceremony,” he said.
[from Phayul.com]
New Delhi, April 10 – Thousands of Tibetan demonstrators carried 154 shrouded effigies, representing the compatriots they believed were killed in a crackdown on anti-China protests in the Himalayan region, in a rally Thursday in the Indian capital.
Carrying placards saying “Stop Cultural Genocide in Tibet” and “China has turned Tibet into a Killing Field,” protesters urged China to release imprisoned Tibetans and remove its heavy military presence from the region.
Roughly 200 protesters marched to New Delhi from Dharmsala, the seat of Tibet’s government-in-exile and home to the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader. The rest of the demonstrators arrived from neighbouring states.
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| (Photo by Tenzin Dasel/Phayul.com) |
The crowd carried effigies to represent the 154 victims they believe were killed in the protests and the ensuing crackdown in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, last month. Chinese authorities say 22 people died in the riots that broke out March 14.
China has accused the Dalai Lama, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, of orchestrating the violence to sabotage the Beijing Olympic Games in August and create an independent state.
Samdhong Rinpoche, the prime minister of the Tibetan government-in-exile, said Tibetan leaders were hoping for a peaceful settlement with China.
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| Prof. Samdhong Rinpoche, the prime minister of the Tibetan government-in-exile speaking to the media. (Photo by Tenzin Dasel/Phayul.com) |
“If they are wise enough, some path for reconciliation might be opened,” Rinpoche told reporters in New Delhi, where he addressed the protesters. “If they remain rigid, the movement will not end and it will sustain by itself.”
The protests are the longest and most sustained challenge to China’s 57-year rule in the Himalayan region, and have focused increased international scrutiny and criticism on China in the run-up to this summer’s games.
The Olympic torch was scheduled to pass through New Delhi on April 17. The international torch relay has faced chaotic protests in London and Paris because of China’s human rights record in Tibet and elsewhere.
On Thursday, five Tibetan protesters briefly displayed a banner reading “No Olympic torch through Tibet” on the path the torch was scheduled take through New Delhi, but they left before police arrived.
From the People’s Daily Online:
With the blessing of the entire world, the sacred Olympic flame is being relayed by thousands of torchbearers across five continents. As the supreme image of Olympic spirit, the torch carries a shared dream of the humankind. Through its relay, people of different races in different regions with different beliefs share the civilized concepts of”peace, friendship and progress”. It is also precisely for this reason that the 2008 torch relay has been welcomed and supported by nations and their populace in its global journey.
It is regrettable, however, that a handful of people sought to disrupt the relay. Since the Olympic sacred fire set off in Greece, a small number of Tibetan independence elements put up one prank after another in a bid to obstruct the Olympic torch relay. In Greece, some of these Tibetan independence protesters were lying on the road when torchbearers were passing by; in London, they attempted to snatch the Olympic torch from the torchbearer and, in Paris, a”Tibet independence” protestor tried to use a fire extinguisher to put out the Olympic torch.
These pranks of”Tibet independence” elements have laid bare before the people worldwide their desperate moves to secede Tibet unscrupulously. For consecutive days, firm opposition by national governments and denunciations by people along the relay route have once again admonished the Tibetan independence elements: If they want to draw on the international attention to the so-called Tibetan issue so as to”pressurize” the Chinese government to settle it given that chances are left till the opening of Beijing Olympics in early August and to disrupt the torch relay, it is extremely stupid for them to do so, and things would run counter to their desires.
Many netizens issued a warning. The few Tibet independence elements have a wishful thinking. The Olympic torch does not belong to China alone, but belong all the more to the world. Tibet independence elements now stand in the opposite to the peace-loving people across the world, and their evil deeds are sure to be subjected to denunciations by people worldwide.
The Olympic sacred fire is a vital, important symbol of human values with respect to the modern Olympic Games. Every torch relay represents a spread of human civilization. It is precisely because of this sense that people worldwide have all along regarded the Olympic torch relay as a lofty, sacred ceremony.
People will never forget that soccer star Pele was seen with tears swelling in his eyes when he held up the Olympic torch at a torch relay ceremony in Athens four years ago and, people still remember very well to date that Muhammad Ali, the boxing great, who lit the flame at the 1996 summer Olympics in Atlanta, the U.S., passed the torch with hands shaking from Parkinson’s diseases to an Olympic gold medal figure. When Ali hoisted the Olympic torch, people became aware the true meaning of torch relay – to spread the ideals and the spirit of Olympic Games, and pray for the justice, peace, understanding and friendship for the humankind. So any deeds to interfere with and sabotage the Olympic sacred fire constitutes not only a blaspheme of the Olympic spirit and but a grave challenge to the human civilization.
“The violence for whatever reason is not compatible with the values of the torch relay or the Olympic Games,” as International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Jacques Rogge has said. The Olympic torch has illuminated the bright future of humanity and also reflects upon the”true colors” or essence of the so-called”cause” and”movement” of the Dalai Lama clique. Those pranks of theirs with an attempt to impose pressures upon China and discredit the country by the means to disrupt the torch relay are simply a futile effort.
By People’s Daily Online and its author is He Zhenhua
[Honestly--Posting this makes me feel very dirty, very angry, and very... ashamed. But, I felt it my duty to post the other side of the coin. And here it is]
[From Phayul.com]
SAN FRANCISCO — A New York environmental activist selected to carry the Olympic torch, Majora Carter of the Bronx, signaled her solidarity with Tibetan protesters by unfurling a Tibetan flag soon after she was handed the torch here yesterday afternoon.
Ms. Carter said that after she pulled the flag from her sleeve the torch was quickly taken from her and she was pushed out of the Olympic entourage. “The Chinese security and cops were on me like white on rice, it was no joke,” she told the Associated Press. “They pulled me out of the race, and then San Francisco police officers pushed me back into the crowd on the side of the street.”
Ms. Carter foreshadowed her action when she spoke Tuesday night at a candlelight vigil staged by Tibetans and pro-Tibet activists. “I’m going to be carrying that torch because I do see it as a light for freedom and for justice,” she said at a candlelight vigil at San Francisco’s United Nations Plaza.
Some in the crowd booed as Ms. Carter was announced, but they seemed to warm to her as she spoke. “I know that I’m getting the kind of love that I’m feeling from all of you tonight, that a little bit of that love is going to transfer into that flame and it is going to go all the way to China,” she said.
Ms. Carter, 41, the founder of Sustainable South Bronx and GreenforAll.org, won a so-called genius grant from the MacArthur Foundation for her environmental efforts among the inner-city poor. She was selected as a torch bearer by one of the relay’s international sponsors, the Coca-Cola Corporation.
At Tuesday’s vigil and rally, Tibetan leaders called on Coca-Cola not to sponsor the portion of the relay where the torch is scheduled to travel through Tibet en route to the summit of Mount Everest. Tibetan activists say taking the torch through Tibet is offensive because martial law is reportedly in place in the region after recent unrest. China has put the death toll from the violence at 22, but the Tibetan government in exile in India says about 140 were killed.
A spokeswoman for Coca-Cola did not respond to e-mail and phone messages seeking comment for this article.
