The Olympic torch arrived in San Francisco on Tuesday for the latest stage of its worldwide relay as the International Olympic Committee for the first time raised the possibility of cutting short the relay or amending the route after the torch’s stops in London and Paris descended into chaos because of anti-Chinese protests.
China, the host of the summer games, on Tuesday criticized the wild street protests that marred the torch’s appearance in London on Sunday and in Paris on Monday but insisted that the international relay would proceed unchanged.
“No force can stop the torch relay of the Olympic Games,” Sun Weide, a spokesman for the Beijing organizing committee, said in Beijing, The Associated Press reported. "We are confident the torch relay of the Beijing Olympic Games will succeed." But I.O.C. officials said they would meet later this week to discuss the protests, and that the future of the route was on the agenda. The I.O.C. cautioned that no decision had been taken, but officials indicated they would consider cutting short or amending the relay for the current Olympic games or for future games.
“We are going to of course discuss the torch relay,” Jacques Rogge, the IOC president, told reporters, Agence France-Presse reported. “We will discuss this and we will see what we have to do now that we have had six or seven legs," he said.
“We will make an analysis of what has happened and then we will draw the necessary conclusions,” he said.
Chinese officials had originally hoped that the torch relay would serve to highlight China’s triumphal emergence as a global power. But it has turned into a high-profile venue for protesters angry over the Chinese crackdown in Tibet, intolerance for political dissent, environmental degradation and other issues.
The torch’s San Francisco stop was the sixth stop of a global itinerary that began last month in Greece, where pro-Tibetan demonstrators briefly interrupted the torch’s lighting and its subsequent progress through Athens. The monthlong tour is scheduled to end in Vietnam in three weeks. That is to be followed by a six-week, 46-stop tour of China.
In Paris on Monday, as it passed through the French capital under armed guard, the torch was extinguished several times, and police officers were forced to move it aboard a bus to protect it as demonstrators swarmed the security detail.
Chinese Olympic organizers abruptly canceled the last leg, as well as a stop at City Hall, where a banner proclaimed, “Paris Defends Human Rights Everywhere in the World.”
In London a day earlier, pro-Tibetan demonstrators similarly turned the torch’s progression through the streets into a tumult of scuffles between the police and protesters. Along the way, numerous protesters seeking to reach the torch were wrestled to the ground by police officers. The police said that one man broke through a tight security cordon and made a failed grab for the torch, and that 35 people were arrested.
One man carrying a fire extinguisher narrowly failed to reach the person carrying the torch, but he set off the extinguisher anyway, dousing police officers with foam
In San Francisco on Monday, ahead of the torch’s arrival on its only stop in the United States, several protesters scaled the vertical suspension cables of the Golden Gate Bridge and unfurled two large banners reading, “One World, One Dream,” and “Free Tibet 08.” At least seven people were arrested.
The city’s mayor, Gavin Newsom, met the police on Monday to consider last-minute changes to the torch’s route and new security measures.
The international tour has proven jarring for Beijing. What organizers had considered an occasion to celebrate the Olympics’ sporting ideals of peace and harmony has turned into a daylong contest between China’s supporters and demonstrators protesting China’s crackdown in Tibet and its wider human rights record.
On Monday, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton joined a small but growing number of leading political figures in the United States and Europe who have called for a boycott of the opening ceremony of the Games.
Olympic officials said the violent protests were damaging the Olympic movement. The scenes of protests may also be troubling news for sponsors of the torch relay, including Coca-Cola, Lenovo and Samsung Electronics. Advertising analysts estimate the companies have paid as much as $15 million each to sponsor the relay.
- from NY Times
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