Senior Olympic officials yesterday raised the prospect for the first time of abandoning the international legs of the Beijing Games torch relay, amid a wave of protests targeting the flame overseas.
The protests continued on Monday with a dramatic stunt at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, two days before the torch’s arrival to the city. Police appeared to have been caught cold by the protest, during which demonstrators scooted up the bridge’s cables using climbing gear and unfurled two giant banners.
The torch relay for Beijing and future Games will be reviewed at a meeting of International Olympic Committee (IOC) chiefs in Beijing beginning on Thursday, Gunilla Lindberg, a vice president of the IOC, told reporters.
PHOTO: AP
“I am sure it will be discussed. I think we need to have a full review,” Lindberg told reporters when asked if she thought the IOC would scrap the overseas legs of the Beijing torch relay.
Other senior IOC officials who are in Beijing to prepare for the August Games spoke bitterly of the demonstrations that have marred China’s efforts to stage the most ambitious torch relay ever.
“All I can say is we are desperately disappointed,” IOC board member Kevan Gosper said.
“[Activists] just take their hate out on whatever the issues are at the time,” Gosper said.
Campaigners are trying to raise publicity about Beijing’s controversial rule of Tibet and a wide range of human-rights abuses in China.
On Monday, the torch relay had to be dramatically cut short in Paris due to disruptions by hundreds of protesters. Widespread protests also disrupted the previous day’s leg in London, while activists promised more of the same in Australia, India, Thailand, Japan and elsewhere.
China’s Foreign Ministry yesterday angrily denounced the protests in Europe against the torch relay as “sabotage” by Tibetan separatists.
Gosper and other IOC officials said they would discuss whether to completely abandon the concept of taking the torch around the world for future Games. Gosper said the IOC might prefer a return to a relay program that would see the torch lit in Greece and then transferred to the host country.
Meanwhile, 11 foreign journalists were scheduled to depart yesterday for western China on a tour organized by China’s Foreign Ministry.
The second tour for foreign media of areas that saw mass Tibetan protests recently will fly to Lanzhou, Gansu Province, where more than 1,000 Buddhist monks led protests.
At the end of last month, journalists were taken on a highly regimented three-day trip to Lhasa. Their tour was interrupted by 30 monks at Jokhang Temple, who shouted about the lack of freedom in Tibet and rebutted China’s claims that the Dalai Lama had fomented the riots.
In related news, US Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Hillary Clinton urged President George W. Bush on Monday to boycott the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics.
Clinton, in a statement, cited violent clashes in Tibet and the lack of pressure by China on the Sudanese government to stop “the genocide in Darfur.”
“I believe President Bush should not plan on attending the opening ceremonies in Beijing, absent major changes by the Chinese government,” the New York senator said.
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