The Olympic torch was paraded through a heavily guarded stadium in Jakarta yesterday after police stopped about 100 anti-China protesters from disrupting the latest leg of the torch’s fraught journey around the world.
Jakarta Governor Fauzi Bowo launched the Jakarta leg of the torch’s world relay before a carefully selected crowd of a few thousand cheering onlookers, who reportedly included 1,000 Chinese students.
Indonesian badminton star and Olympic gold medalist Taufik Hidayat lit a cauldron in front of the crowd as about 2,500 policemen and 1,000 military personnel guarded the stadium complex.
PHOTO: AFP
“I’m very proud to be part of this. I hope I can win a gold medal like four years ago” said Hidayat after lighting the cauldron.
The flame, meant to symbolize the spirit of the Games, went out and had to be re-lit.
Eighty people from all walks of life took turns carrying the torch along a 7km route inside the complex. Torch bearers included Tourism Minister Jero Wacik, Chinese Ambassador Lan Linjun, Sports and Youth Minister Adhyaksa Dault.
Officials had wanted to parade the flame, making its first ever visit to Indonesia, through Jakarta’s traffic-clogged streets and Chinatown but the plans were changed radically after “coordination” with Beijing.
The event was not televised live, apparently because no station was prepared to pay for the rights.
The relay had attracted little interest in the Indonesian media or the public, perhaps because the Olympics themselves are not very popular. Indonesia was the only country in the world not to air TV broadcasts of the 2004 Olympics in Athens.
Earlier in the day, there was a 30-minute stand-off between police and about protesters outside the main gate of Bung Karno Stadium.
The protesters, grouped under the Indonesian Society for a Free Tibet, shouted “Free Tibet!” and held up banners reading “Olympics and crimes against humanity cannot coexist.”
Police arrested a Dutch citizen taking part in the protest after he failed to show his passport, deputy police chief Herri Wibowo said.
“They said they had a permit to hold a rally but they could not prove it,” he told reporters.
Seven other protesters were briefly detained but released after the crowd agree to disperse, said protest leader Muhammad Gatot.
Rights activists said Indonesia had buckled under Chinese pressure to quash protesters angry at Beijing’s rule over Tibet.
“We are very saddened by the way the Olympics are being handled at this time,” said Gatot, of the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation. “The move to restrict the torch relay is against the Olympic spirit of openness, togetherness and respect for others.”
The relay ceremony closed with the head of the Indonesian sports committee handing the flame, kept in a small lantern, to a team of Chinese athletes who accompanied it from Kuala Lumpur.
The torch is due to fly to Australia today for the next leg of the relay tomorrow.
However, Australian torch bearer Lin Hatfield-Dodds said yesterday that she would not take part. The social justice advocate said that while she still supports the Olympics and its athletes, the symbolism of the relay had changed after China’s Tibet crackdown.
Meanwhile, two South Koreans slated to run in the torch relay in Seoul on Sunday said yesterday that they would boycott the event to protest the Tibet crackdown.
“The decision was unavoidable and it has been determined that the Tibetan crisis counters the spirit of the Olympics,” said Choi Seung-kook, secretary-general of the environmental group Green Korea.
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
TURNAROUND: The Liberal Party had trailed the Conservatives by a wide margin, but that was before Trump threatened to make Canada the US’ 51st state Canada’s ruling Liberals, who a few weeks ago looked certain to lose an election this year, are mounting a major comeback amid the threat of US tariffs and are tied with their rival Conservatives, according to three new polls. An Ipsos survey released late on Tuesday showed that the left-leaning Liberals have 38 percent public support and the official opposition center-right Conservatives have 36 percent. The Liberals have overturned a 26-point deficit in six weeks, and run advertisements comparing the Conservative leader to Trump. The Conservative strategy had long been to attack unpopular Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but last month he
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
RSS