[+/-] : Dalai Lama under fire at Tibet relay

Dalai Lama under fire at Tibet relay

By Geoff Dyer in Beijing,The Financial Times

Chinese officials used the visit of the Olympic torch to the Tibetan capital on Saturday to launch an attack on the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader.

The torch relay in Lhasa lasted for just over two hours, much shorter than had been planned before the unrest in Tibet in March. It went off without protests along a route lined with a heavy security presence.

"We will certainly be able to totally smash the splittist schemes of the Dalai Lama clique," said Zhang Qingli, Communist party secretary in Tibet, at the end of the event, according to Reuters.

Speaking in front of the Potala Palace, the Dalai Lama's former residence, Mr Zhang said: "Tibet's sky will never change and the red flag with five stars [China's flag] will forever flutter high above it."

The government has accused the Dalai Lama and other exiles of inciting the unrest, particularly the riot on March 14 when several Han Chinese were killed. The Dalai Lama has denied the charge. The torch goes next to Qinghai province.

The decision to carry on with the Tibet visithas been criticised by Tibetan exiles and human rights groups, which accuse the government of politicising the torch relay.

"This provocative decision - with the blessing of the International Olympic Committee - could aggravate tensions and undermine the fragile process to find a peaceful long-term solution," said Sharon Hom, executive director of Human Rights in China.

"The government's insistence on parading the torch through Lhasa can only undermine the respect and trust required for a genuine dialogue with the Dalai Lama."

A small group of foreign reporters, allowed into Tibet to cover the event, said hundreds of paramilitary and other police were positioned along the route. They added that people living nearby were told to stay at home unless they had a special pass to witness the torch.
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[+/-] : Tensions simmering with Olympic torch in Tibet

Relations are still very tense between Chinese officials and Tibetans. (Getty Images: Guang Niu)

Tensions simmering with Olympic torch in Tibet
By China correspondent Stephen McDonell,ABC News on line

Over the weekend the Chinese Government went ahead with its controversial plan to run the Olympic torch relay through Tibet.

Heavy security guaranteed there were no human rights demonstrations. Instead, the relay ended up being a rallying point for local political leaders who vowed to destroy the Dalai Lama, even as they put new touches to some of Lhasa's landmarks.

Though foreigners are still banned from entering Tibet, after the violent rebellion in March a handful of journalists were allowed into Lhasa to cover the torch relay, which had been cut from three days in Tibet to three hours.

We were allowed to witness the relay in the capital Lhasa, along with a small, specially-selected crowd.

Most ordinary people were told to stay off the streets until it was over. Relations are still very tense between Chinese officials and Tibetans.

After the relay we were kept busy with a program full of whirlwind visits to cultural attractions.

When Tibetans restore historic buildings the workers sing and bang and tap in time. This image of happy, working Tibetans in touch with their culture is a side to life that Government authorities are happy for foreign reporters to see.

We visited the Sera Monastery where the recent conflict started in March, after its monks clashed with police on the anniversary of a failed uprising.

There are supposed to be 550 monks living at the Monastery. We saw fewer than 10. Maybe they were confined to their sleeping quarters. There were a lot of police with walkie-talkies and local officials with loud hailers telling us where we should go and to hurry up.

We were eventually presented with a "senior monk" who could talk to us. He said the monks from his monastery had been permitted in recent days to go shopping in town. He was asked what the monks are being taught in the recently introduced re-education classes.

Speaking through a translator he said that the content of the legal knowledge education was to improve the monks' understanding of state law and the constitution so that they "do not violate laws".

He seemed to want to go on to explain himself but we were denied a chance to ask another question.

We were then taken to the Potala Palace the huge former residence of the Dalai Lama.

It was here that the torch relay became a political rally when the head of the Tibetan Communist Party, Zhang Qingli, held up the Olympic torch and then announced "Tibet's sky will never change and the red flag with five stars will forever flutter high above it".

Inside the Palace on a hill overlooking the site is a room which used to be the home of China's favourite enemy, the Dalai Lama.

I got to stand in his bedroom, a small, modest space decorated with religious artefacts. Upstairs there was banging as workers carried out restoration.

It is unclear though what he would have thought had he been here to look out his window at the sights and sounds of the Olympic torch arriving to great fanfare, and local Government officials declaring their readiness to crush the "Dalai Lama clique".

What you can see from the room is a city with a heavy police and military presence.

Over the weekend trucks full of riot police were driving up and down and by late Sunday only a smattering of pilgrims had returned to the streets which are normally crowded with visitors to the holy city.

I have been to Tibet several times, and the fear and mistrust here is much worse now than it was before.

The overall sense is of a land under occupation where the occupiers are worried that the locals could turn on them at any time, and they are prepared to use the full force of the state to make sure that that does not happen.
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[+/-] : China's Olympic Nightmare

China's Olympic Nightmare

What the Games Mean for Beijing's Future
By Elizabeth C. Economy and Adam Segal
From Foreign Affairs , July/August 2008

Summary: Failure to plan for predictable problems has turned China's coming-out party into an embarrassment.


ELIZABETH C. ECONOMY is C. V. Starr Senior Fellow and Director for Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. ADAM SEGAL is Maurice R. Greenberg Senior Fellow for China Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

On the night of July 13, 2001, tens of thousands of people poured into Tiananmen Square to celebrate the International Olympic Committee's decision to award the 2008 Olympic Games to Beijing. Firecrackers exploded, flags flew high, and cars honked wildly. It was a moment to be savored. Chinese President Jiang Zemin and other leaders exhorted the crowds to work together to prepare for the Olympics. "Winning the host rights means winning the respect, trust, and favor of the international community," Wang Wei, a senior Beijing Olympic official, proclaimed. The official Xinhua News Agency reveled in the moment, calling the decision "another milestone in China's rising international status and a historical event in the great renaissance of the Chinese nation."

Hosting the Olympics was supposed to be a chance for China's leaders to showcase the country's rapid economic growth and modernization to the rest of the world. Domestically, it provided an opportunity for the Chinese government to demonstrate the Communist Party's competence and affirm the country's status as a major power on equal footing with the West. And wrapping itself in the values of the Olympic movement gave China the chance to portray itself not only as a rising power but also as a "peace-loving" country. For much of the lead-up to the Olympics, Beijing succeeded in promoting just such a message.

The process of preparing for the Games is tailor-made to display China's greatest political and economic strengths: the top-down mobilization of resources, the development and execution of grand-scale campaigns to reform public behavior, and the ability to attract foreign interest and investment to one of the world's brightest new centers of culture and business. Mobilizing massive resources for large infrastructure projects comes easily to China. Throughout history, China's leaders have drawn on the ingenuity of China's massive population to realize some of the world's most spectacular construction projects, the Great Wall, the Grand Canal, and the Three Gorges Dam among them. The Olympic construction spree has been no different. Beijing has built 19 new venues for the events, doubled the capacity of the subway, and added a new terminal to the airport. Neighborhoods throughout the city have been either spruced up to prepare for Olympic visitors or simply cleared out to make room for new Olympic sites. Official government spending for the construction bonanza is nearing $40 billion. In anticipation of the Olympics, the government has also embarked on a series of efforts to transform individual behavior and modernize the capital city. It has launched etiquette campaigns forbidding spitting, smoking, littering, and cutting in lines and introduced programs to teach English to cab drivers, police officers, hotel workers, and waiters. City officials have used Olympic projects as a means to refurbish decaying buildings and reduce air pollution, water shortages, and traffic jams.

Yet even as Beijing has worked tirelessly to ensure the most impressive of Olympic spectacles, it is clear that the Games have come to highlight not only the awesome achievements of the country but also the grave shortcomings of the current regime. Few in the central leadership seem to have anticipated the extent to which the Olympic Games would stoke the persistent political challenges to the legitimacy of the Communist Party and the stability of the country. Demands for political liberalization, greater autonomy for Tibet, increased pressure on Sudan, better environmental protection, and an improved product-safety record now threaten to put a damper on the country's coming-out party. As the Olympic torch circled the globe with legions of protesters in tow, Beijing's Olympic dream quickly turned into a public-relations nightmare.

Although the Chinese government excels when it comes to infrastructure projects, its record is poor when it comes to transparency, official accountability, and the rule of law. It has responded clumsily to internal and external political challenges -- by initially ignoring the international community's desire for China to play a more active role in resolving the human rights crisis in Darfur, arresting prominent Chinese political activists, and cracking down violently on demonstrators. Although there is no organized opposition unified around this set of demands, the cacophony of voices pressuring China to change its policies has taken much of the luster off of the Beijing Games. Moreover, although the Communist Party has gained domestic support from the nationalist backlash that has arisen in response to the Tibetan protesters and their supporters in the West, it also worries that this public anger will spin out of control, further damaging the country's international reputation. Already, China's coveted image as a responsible rising power has been tarnished.

For many in the international community, it has now become impossible to separate the competing narratives of China's awe-inspiring development and its poor record on human rights and the environment. It is no longer possible to discuss China's future without taking its internal fault lines seriously. For the Chinese government, the stakes are huge. China's credibility as a global leader, its potential as a model for the developing world, and its position as an emerging center of global business and culture are all at risk if these political challenges cannot be peacefully and successfully addressed.

TIANANMEN'S GHOSTS

Nothing has threatened to ruin China's Olympic moment as much as criticism of the country's repressive political system. China lost its bid for the 2000 Summer Olympics to Sydney, Australia, at least in part because of the memory of the violent Tiananmen Square crackdown of June 1989. When China made its bid for the 2008 Games, Liu Jingmin, vice president of the Beijing Olympic Bid Committee, argued, "By allowing Beijing to host the Games, you will help the development of human rights." Fran蔞is Carrard, director general of the International Olympic Committee, warily supported such a sentiment: acknowledging the seriousness of China's human rights violations, he nonetheless explained, "We are taking the bet that seven years from now ... we shall see many changes."

Few would place such a bet today. For months, human rights activists, democracy advocates, and ethnic minorities in China have been pressuring the government to demonstrate its commitment to greater political freedom. For many of them, the Olympics highlight the yawning gap between the very attractive face that Beijing presents to the world and the much uglier political reality at home. Exactly one year before the Olympics, a group of 40 prominent Chinese democracy supporters posted an open letter online denouncing the Olympic glitz and glamour. "We know too well how these glories are built on the ruins of the lives of ordinary people, on the forced removal of urban migrants, and on the sufferings of victims of brutal land grabbing, forced eviction, exploitation of labor, and arbitrary detention," they wrote. "All this violates the Olympic spirit." Even Ai Weiwei, an artistic consultant for Beijing's signature "Bird's Nest" stadium, has been critical of the Chinese government. He declared in an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel, "The government wants to use these games to celebrate itself and its policy of opening up China .... By now, it has become clear to me that this hope of liberalization cannot be fulfilled .... The system won't allow it."

Protests have arisen around virtually every Olympic Games in recent history, but Beijing, with its authoritarian political system, is uniquely threatened by dissenting voices, and it has responded with a traditional mix of intimidation, imprisonment, and violent repression. Teng Biao, a lawyer and human rights activist, was seized in March 2008, held by plainclothes police for two days, and warned to stop writing critically about the Olympics. Yang Chunlin, a land-rights activist, was arrested for inciting subversion because he had gathered more than 10,000 signatures from farmers whose property had been expropriated by officials for development projects. After a 20-minute trial, he was sentenced to five years in prison. In April, the HIV/AIDS activist Hu Jia, who was also one of the authors of the open letter, was sentenced to three and a half years in jail for subversion, after being held under house arrest for several months along with his wife and baby daughter. Although the vast majority of Chinese are probably unaware of these protests and arrests, Beijing's overreaction demonstrates how fearful the Chinese government is that any dissent or protests could garner broader political support and threaten the party's authority.

CRASHING THE PARTY

The international community has also raised its own human rights concerns. For more than a year, China has endured heightened scrutiny of its close economic and political ties to Sudan. A coalition of U.S. celebrities and international human rights activists has ratcheted up the pressure on Beijing to do more to help bring an end to the atrocities in Darfur, labeling the 2008 Olympics "the genocide Olympics." The very public attention they have brought to China's relations with the Sudanese government prompted the movie director Steven Spielberg to withdraw as the artistic adviser for the opening and closing ceremonies for the Games. It also seems to have had some effect on Beijing, which now strives to appear as if it is placing more pressure on Khartoum.

The Chinese government's questionable human rights record has received even more scrutiny since its violent suppression of Tibetan demonstrators in the spring. In March, Tibetan Buddhist monks marched to commemorate the 49th anniversary of Tibet's failed independence uprising and to call for greater autonomy for Tibet and the return of their exiled religious leader, the Dalai Lama. The demonstrations soon escalated into violent protests. Chinese police forcefully cracked down on the protesters in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa and throughout other Tibetan areas of western China, leaving more than a hundred dead and injuring hundreds more.

Ignoring international calls for restraint, Beijing closed off much of the affected region, detained or expelled foreign journalists from the area, and created a "most wanted" list of Tibetan protesters. All independent sources of news, including broadcasts by foreign television stations and YouTube videos, were blacked out in China, and text messages in and out of Tibet were filtered. Vitriolic government propaganda condemned the Dalai Lama as a "wolf in monk's robes" and a "devil with a human face but the heart of a beast." Chinese officials accused the "evil Dalai clique" of attempting to restore "feudalist serfdom" in the region and called for a "people's war" against it. The international community immediately condemned the crackdown and called for Beijing to resume negotiations with representatives of the Dalai Lama. Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Czech President V塶lav Klaus, and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk have since announced that they will not be attending the Olympics' opening ceremonies.

As the Olympic torch made its way across the globe, the number of protesters along its path ballooned, from a few in Athens to thousands in London, Paris, San Francisco, and Seoul. These large-scale disruptions of Olympic pageantry humiliated the Chinese government and angered Chinese citizens, producing a wave of nationalist counterdemonstrations by Chinese living abroad and millions of virulent anti-Western posts on Chinese Web sites. A bit more than a month after Beijing's initial crackdown, senior Chinese leaders indicated a willingness to meet with the Dalai Lama's envoys. But this does not represent a fundamental shift in policy; it is merely a stopgap measure designed to quell the international outrage.

WAITING TO INHALE

Although some foreign athletes have joined the chorus of China's critics, the more immediate concern for many Olympians will be whether Beijing can ensure clean air and safe food for the duration of the Games. The city has reportedly spent as much as $16 billion to deliver a "green Olympics"; many of the Olympic sites showcase a number of clean-energy and water-conservation technologies, and for the past seven years the city has been shutting down many of the biggest polluters and steadily weaning the city's energy infrastructure off coal, replacing it with natural gas. On February 26, senior Chinese officials formally announced a more sweeping effort, including restrictions on heavy industry in five neighboring provinces surrounding Beijing, a ban on construction in the months immediately preceding the Olympics, and plans to compensate car owners for staying off the road during the Games.

But pollution levels in Beijing are still far above average. On a typical day, the city's air pollution is three times as bad as the standard deemed safe by the World Health Organization. Last August, an air-quality test revealed that pollution levels in the city had barely improved despite one-third of the cars having been removed from the city's roads. Even some senior Chinese officials have reservations about the prospects for a green Olympics. The mayor of Beijing, Guo Jinlong, admitted in early 2008 that bringing traffic and environmental pollution under control by the time the Games begin would be an "arduous" task. After all, there are few economic incentives for businesses to reduce pollution; the central government routinely calls on local officials and businesses to clean up their act to no effect. Many factory managers have agreed to slow production during the Olympics but not to shut down. In the brutally competitive Chinese economy, closing factories for several weeks could well spell the end of those enterprises unless the government provides significant financial compensation. Meanwhile, corruption flourishes, and local officials openly flout environmental laws and regulations. In January 2008, it was revealed by a Western environmental consultant, Steven Andrews, that officials in Beijing's Environmental Protection Bureau had for several years been skewing the city's air-quality data by eliminating readings from some monitoring stations in heavily congested areas.

Faced with the prospect of dangerously high levels of air pollution during the Games, International Olympic Committee officials have warned that competition in endurance sports, such as the marathon and long-distance cycling, might be postponed or even canceled. The world's fastest marathon runner, Haile Gebrselassie, has already withdrawn from the Olympic race for fear that air pollution might permanently damage his health. Many athletes are planning to take precautions, such as arriving in Beijing as late as possible, coming well equipped with medication for possible asthma attacks, and wearing masks once there.

Beijing's capacity to provide safe food and clean water for the athletes is also in question. In the past year, China has endured a rash of scandals involving food tainted with steroids and insecticides, and as much as half of the bottled water in Beijing does not meet potable-water standards. Some teams, such as the United States' and Australia's, have announced that they will be bringing some or all of their own food and that their bottled water will be supplied by Coca-Cola. Olympic officials have put in place a massive food-security apparatus that will track the athletes' food from the producers and distributors to the Olympic Village. Having promised a safe and green Olympics, Beijing must now deliver. Otherwise, it risks irrevocably damaging the historic legacy of the 2008 Games.

BEIJING'S BLIND SPOT

Beijing's failure to respond creatively to its critics and effectively manage its environmental and product-safety issues reveals a certain political myopia. China's leaders have long been aware that opponents of the regime would try to disrupt the Olympics. They prepared extensively for disturbances by developing a citywide network of surveillance cameras and training, outfitting, and deploying riot squads and other special police. They also made some attempts to defuse international hostility, such as offering to renew the human rights dialogue with Washington that was suspended in 2004 and publicly pressuring Khartoum to accept a joint African Union-United Nations peacekeeping force. But Beijing has been unable to counter the images emanating from Darfur and Tibet. Chinese leaders simply saw no relationship between the pageantry of the Olympics and Tibet, Sudan, or broader human rights concerns, and they never figured out how to engage and disarm those who did. They continue to fail in this regard.

As a result, tensions will run high until the end of the Games. There are also real worries that with the spotlight focused on Beijing during the Games, some of the opposition to the regime could take an extreme form. For example, Chinese security forces have expressed concern that activists from the religious movement Falun Gong might attempt to immolate themselves in Tiananmen Square. Because of such concerns, the 30,000 journalists covering the Games may find themselves straitjacketed when reporting on controversial stories. And despite recent assurances that a live feed from Beijing will be allowed and that the Internet will be uncensored in China, the government has yet to fulfill its promise to allow foreign journalists unfettered access throughout the country.

The Chinese public is already angry about what it sees as a pervasive bias toward Tibet and disrespect of China in the Western media. Chinese citizens are likely to view any disturbances of the Games as an effort to embarrass the country and undermine China's rise. Foreign media, corporations, and governments might all bear the brunt of the sort of nationalist backlash that the French retailer Carrefour endured -- in the form of a consumer boycott -- in the wake of the disrupted torch ceremony in Paris.

The combination of demonstrators desperate for the world's attention and the heightened nationalism of Chinese citizens makes for an extremely combustible situation. The official Beijing Olympic motto of "One World, One Dream" suggests an easy cosmopolitanism, but Chinese nationalist sentiment will be running high during the Games, stoked by the heat of competition. In the past, sporting events in China, in particular soccer matches against Japanese teams, have led to ugly riots, and the same could happen during the Olympics. If the Games do not go well, there will be infighting and blame shifting within the party's central leadership, and it will likely adopt a bunker mentality. Vice President Xi Jinping, the government's point man on the Olympics and President Hu Jintao's heir apparent, would likely face challenges to his presumed leadership.

A poor outcome for the Games could engender another round of nationalist outbursts and Chinese citizens decrying what they see as racism, anti-Chinese bias, and a misguided sense of Western superiority. This inflamed form of Chinese nationalism could be the most enduring and dangerous outcome of the protests surrounding the Olympics. If the international community does not welcome China's rise, the Chinese people may ask themselves why China should be bound by its rules. As a result, Beijing may find the room it has for foreign policy maneuvering more restricted by public opinion. This form of heightened nationalism has occasionally hurt the Chinese government, as happened after a U.S. spy plane was shot down over China in 2001. When the crew was eventually released, an outraged Chinese public accused the government of weakness and kowtowing to the West. More recently, despite a decade of increasingly close economic, political, and cultural ties between Beijing and Seoul, South Koreans were outraged by the Chinese counterprotests during the Olympic torch ceremony; in response, the South Korean government imposed tight restrictions on the number of Chinese students permitted to study in the country. Sensing the potentially damaging consequences of a prolonged nationalist backlash, the official Chinese media began signaling in May that it was time for people to move on, focus on economic development, and steer clear of staging counterprotests and boycotting Western companies.

The barrage of criticism China has endured prior to the Olympics may have brought a short-term gain in forcing the Chinese leadership to agree to meet with the Dalai Lama's envoys, but real reform of China's Tibet policy or a broader willingness to embrace domestic reforms is unlikely to follow in the near term. Nevertheless, the current controversy could yield positive results in the long run. Beijing's Olympic trials and tribulations could provoke soul searching among China's leaders and demonstrate to them that their hold on domestic stability and the country's continued rise depend on greater transparency and accountability and a broader commitment to human rights. Already, some Chinese bloggers, intellectuals, and journalists, such as Wang Lixiong and Chang Ping, have seized the moment to call for less nationalist rhetoric and more thoughtful engagement of outside criticism. The nationalist outburst has provided them with an opening to ask publicly how Chinese citizens can legitimately attack Western media organizations if their own government does not allow them to watch media outlets such as CNN and the BBC. Similarly, they have used the Olympics as a springboard to discuss the significance of Taiwan's thriving democracy for the mainland's own political future, the need for rethinking China's approach to Tibet, and the desirability of an open press.

Whatever the longer-term implications of the 2008 Olympics, what has transpired thus far bears little resemblance to Beijing's dreams of Olympic glory. Rather than basking in the admiration of the world, China is beset by internal protests and international condemnation. The world is increasingly doubtful that Beijing will reform politically and become a responsible global actor. The Olympics were supposed to put these questions to bed, not raise them all anew.
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[+/-] : No Torch Through Tibet, say NYC Tibetans

No Torch Through Tibet, say NYC Tibetans

New York, June 17, 2008 - As Beijing postponed its Tibet leg of the Olympic torch relay, the Tibetans went ahead with their protest against the Olympic torch here today. Organized by Regional Tibetan Youth Congress, Students for a Free Tibet, Regional Tibetan Women’s Association, New York and New Jersey Tibetan Community and US Tibet Committee, the event marked the 100th day of China’s crackdown in Tibet following March 14th protests in Lhasa and daily protest by Tibetans in New York.


Tibetans and supporters from New York, New Jersey, Boston, and Philadelphia gathered this morning at the Chinese Consulate with Tibetan national flags, banners, placards and leaflets to condemn the Chinese government’s decision to pass the Olympic torch through Tibet. The Tibetans say that the Chinese government is deliberately putting Tibet in the torch route to reaffirm its domination over Tibet by attributing its claim over Tibet to the passage of the torch through Lhasa. The Tibetans also fear that the China would not hesitate to resort to violent crackdown in the event of Tibetans in Tibet protesting the torch relay. Tsering Palden, the president of the RTYC, NY&NJ, told phayul that the 5 organization strongly condemn the Chinese government’s repressive policies in Tibet and that the organizations stand in complete solidarity with the Tibetan people inside Tibet which is locked down since the March crackdown. “We seek the International Olympic Committee’s intervention to remove Tibet from China’s route for the bloody torch relay, “said Palden.


Youngsters dramatizing Tibet leg of the Olympic torch relay as protesters watch, 06/17/08
The organizers said they are gravely concerned about the situation inside Tibet as reports of arrests and killings continue to reach the outside world particularly as China keeps the international media at bay. A banner that read ‘China! Allow Free Media into Tibet’, made rounds in the sky opposite the Chinese Consulate as the Tibetans shouted slogans below.

After an event that featured speeches by the organizers, a political skit by volunteers of Students for a Free Tibet, and slogan raising, the Tibetans walked from the Chinese Consulate to the UN Plaza where another gathering was held. The Tibetans raised slogans against China’s killing of Tibetan protesters in Tibet in the last three months and condemned the Tibet leg of the torch relay due this Saturday. A group of Tibetan youngsters performed a skit depicting Chinese repression in Tibet. The skit arranged by Regional Tibetan Youth Congress dramatized events related to the Olympic torch relay in Tibet and consequent clampdown by Chinese security forces. The event concluded with a march to the Chinese mission where the Tibetans continued to protest vehemently.


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[+/-] : Olympic torch relay cut to one day in Tibet

Olympic torch relay cut to one day in Tibet

China has scrapped its original plans for a three-day Olympic torch relay tour of Tibet and will send the flame there just for one day this weekend, a Beijing Olympic official said Wednesday.


Zhu Jing, a spokeswoman at the Beijing Games organising committee, said the decision to cut short the relay and run it through the Tibetan capital Lhasa on Saturday was taken following last month's earthquake in Sichuan province.

"Following the earthquake on May 12, BOCOG has announced adjustments to the domestic legs of the torch relay," Zhu said.

"The Tibet leg of the relay will be on June 21, with the relay taking place in Lhasa."

The torch was originally scheduled to tour Tibet for three days from June 19 to 21 as part of its long international journey to the Games being hosted by the Chinese capital in August.

The torch is currently travelling through Xinjiang, a largely Muslim region in China's northwest, on a three-day, four-city tour scheduled to end Thursday.

The stops in Xinjiang and the Tibetan regions of China are regarded as the most sensitive of the domestic relay route, which runs for thousands of miles (kilometres) over three months through every part of the country.

China accuses Muslim separatists in Xinjiang of plotting terrorist attacks on the Games and stepped up security in the region ahead of the relay.

Tibetans are also accused of targeting the Olympics, following a crackdown on anti-Chinese government unrest in Lhasa in March in which exiled Tibetan leaders say 203 people died.

China has reported killing one Tibetan "insurgent" and says "rioters" were responsible for 21 deaths.

Despite the unrest China stuck with its original plan to take the torch relay to the top of Mount Everest on May 8 using a separate flame from the one used on the relay route through the rest of the country.

The ascent took place under tight security and triggered protests from exiled Tibetan groups who said it was a provocation and politicised the torch relay.

China's rule over Tibet was a major rallying cry for protesters who dogged the torch's month-long global journey in April before it came here.

Pro-Tibet activists have argued that the leg in Lhasa should be cancelled due to the unrest.

New York-based Human Rights Watch said Chinese authorities were using the relay as a propaganda tool and had been carrying out arbitrary arrests to prevent protests during the relay.

"It is irresponsible for the Chinese government to deliberately send a torch into a powder keg, and the IOC (International Olympic Committee) and Olympic sponsors should ask Beijing to cancel this part of the relay," the group said in a statement.

BOCOG said that 50 journalists from 31 news organisations would be allowed to cover the relay in Lhasa, which has been off limits to foreign reporters and tourists since the crackdown on unrest there three months ago.

"We will make proper arrangements for media coverage of the relay in Lhasa," said Zhu.

She declined to say whether scrapping the original three-day torch leg was connected to security fears in the Himalayan region following the unrest.

"The adjustment to the Tibet leg of the torch relay is because of the earthquake, which has caused us to make several changes to the original route," said Zhu.

According to the original torch relay schedule, the Tibetan leg was to be followed by a trip to neighbouring Qinghai and then Gansu province, which both have ethnic Tibetan communities.

Zhu said the future route had yet to be officially announced. Torch relay organisers in the Qinghai capital of Xining told AFP that they had no information and calls to the torch relay office in Gansu's capital Lanzhou went unanswered.
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[+/-] : China needs to stop playing games

China needs to stop playing games

As 20,000 journalists get ready for the Beijing Olympics, just how much freedom will they have to report what is happening on and off the track?
by Phil Harding , The Guardian, Monday May 26 2008

In Beijing's bid for the 2008 Olympics, the guarantee was clear and unmistakable: "there will be no restrictions on media reporting and movement of journalists up to and including the Olympic games".


In a country that keeps such a tight grip on its own media and which severely restricts access to its markets by foreign media companies - resisting even the persistent blandishments of Rupert Murdoch - it is a guarantee that has been hotly disputed ever since. In just under three months' time, amid some very mixed signals from the authorities, just over 20,000 journalists and broadcasters will descend on the Chinese capital to put it to the test.

Ever since the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced in 2001 that this year's games had been awarded to Beijing, it has been clear that they were going to be the most politically sensitive since the boycotted Moscow Olympics of 1980, possibly even since the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Ashling O'Connor, Olympics correspondent for the Times, believes that is bound to shape the reporting: "Normally once the games actually begin, the coverage is pretty much confined to the sports pages. This time because the Chinese authorities have left so many questions unanswered these games are going to be on the news and foreign pages too."

Free to travel

The journalist advocacy group, Reporters Without Borders, has singled out China as the world's leading jailer of journalists, with at least 33 imprisoned at the start of this year. Sports and news editors' in-boxes have been flooded with emails from human rights groups. Given the highly controversial nature of these games and given China's record on media freedom is it going to be possible to report freely?

Lindsey Hilsum, Beijing correspondent for Channel 4 News, says the big tests will come when the games start: "Will the internet really be uncensored? Will journalists be free to travel? Will CNN and BBC World not be blacked out any more?"

In January 2007 the Chinese Foreign Ministry announced that accredited foreign journalists would be free to travel in China, outside Tibet and the Muslim western region of Xinjiang, without official permission. In practice, this has only partly happened. In the last fortnight access for the foreign media to the disaster areas of the Sichuan earthquake has been relatively unrestricted. But during the Tibet disturbances in March more than 40 journalists were turned away from covering protests in neighbouring regions, and some were detained. The Guardian's Jonathan Watts made a video of his frustrating trip calling it "7 Days not in Tibet".

The important difference is that the Tibet protests were political, the earthquake emergency is not. Jon Williams, the BBC's world news editor, says of the government's attitude overall: "When they've been good, they've been very good, when they've been bad they've been horrid."

Free access to the internet in China - another promise for the Olympics - has always been problematic. Via the "Great FireWall of China", there is strict control on what can be seen and what can't. When challenged over access to the BBC news site, the Chinese government always denied blocking and cited "technical problems". This year in March during the Tibet demonstrations, the Guardian site was briefly blocked in China for the first time.

Then at the end of March - and just before an inspection visit by the IOC - the BBC News site in English suddenly and without explanation was unblocked for the first time in 10 years. But the BBC's Chinese-language site has stayed off limits. The internet now mirrors what happens with the World Service's radio broadcasts where the Chinese broadcasts are jammed while the English programmes are not.

After their most recent visit, the IOC said they "were satisfied by the assurances we received across a number of areas including internet access". But a month later, China's technology minister, Wan Gang, was less clear: "I've not got any clear information about which sites will be screened or shut ... Every country limits access to some websites". According to Hilsum, internet access still "comes and goes", Wikipedia sometimes disappears, sites such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International are still blocked: "I would not be surprised if all the English sites are unblocked for the three weeks of the Olympics. The big issue will be what happens after that."

The most important window on this summer's games will be television. It is the television images that will set the tone for the games. The worldwide audience is expected to top 4 billion viewers. Dave Gordon, who as BBC Sport's head of major events is in overall charge of the BBC's Olympic coverage, says: "This to me is a huge challenge of a story. My first Olympics was Moscow. This is even more of a challenge." It is significant that for these games the BBC has decided not to treat the opening ceremony as just another sporting event. Its coverage will be fronted by Huw Edwards from News alongside Hazel Irvine from Sport with expert analysis from Carrie Gracie, the former Beijing correspondent.

Pictures of the ceremony and sporting events will come almost exclusively from a pool feed provided by the Olympic host broadcaster, Beijing Olympic Broadcasting, a joint Chinese-foreign company set up specifically for these games. For each event there will be one set of identical pictures from each venue available to each broadcast rights holder. In all there will be some 3,800 hours of live feeds. At any one time broadcasters will have up to 20 feeds coming in. As the Chinese have a track record of censoring television coverage they don't like, possible censorship of the Olympics has become a real issue.

At one time it was reported that the Chinese authorities had asked for a delay on the live feeds. But Gordon says: "We have been given absolute assurances that the feeds will be live." But what is not yet clear is what the policy of the host broadcaster will be on coverage of any demonstrations. For Gordon this is fundamental: "We will expect all events to be fully covered in the stadium whether it's on the field or off the field action. We don't want any editorial decisions made for us." But, just in case, the BBC will have its own unilateral cameras at some events "able to capture what we need if we need to".

French television has said if there is any censorship of the pictures, they will boycott coverage. What can domestic Chinese audiences expect to see during the Olympics? Until the non-stop coverage of the earthquake eclipsed all other news, the tone of much of the Olympic coverage on CCTV had been remorselessly upbeat and euphoric. Step-by-step reports on the progress of the torch relay through China were regularly the lead item on the news. On one day just the dress rehearsal for the relay in Macao made the second lead. Coverage of the earlier protests in the west was much more circumspect. What has also come across strongly from Chinese media coverage is the real sense of hurt and anger at the way the western media have concentrated so much on protests and abuses of human rights. Both the BBC and CNN have encountered fierce protests about their coverage (there is now a Chinese website called anti-cnn.com). Many of the comments also seem to express genuine puzzlement at what they see as the dismissal of China's best efforts to offer the world a peaceful torch rally, coupled with a spectacular Olympics. Some bloggers see a western-led conspiracy between Washington and Paris.

In the next few weeks the media spotlight will inevitably switch away from the earthquake and back to the Olympics. For those covering the games, it will be a tricky and pressurised time. If the Olympics are portrayed as a well-organised success, the media will be accused of falling for a Chinese propaganda exercise. On the other hand, if there are protests and they are properly covered, there will be accusations from the Chinese that the actions of an unrepresentative minority have been magnified out of proportion. Jon Williams warns against journalists going to China with too many preconceptions: "It would be wrong for us to start with a fixed mind to cover the games through the prism of Tibet and protest. But on the other hand we have to be prepared for any events if they do happen."
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[+/-] : Tibetan ‘Olympics’ hit a number of hurdles

Tibetan ‘Olympics’ hit a number of hurdles

AFP, DHARAMSHALA, INDIA Friday, May 23, 2008, Published on Taipei Times

A mock “Olympics” being held as an anti-China protest by Tibetan exiles in India has failed to attract sponsors and cannot even afford to pay out the prize money on offer, organizers say.

The alternative Olympics, which has just 23 participants, comes less than three months before the real games in Beijing and will feature sports such as swimming, archery and shooting.

Catherine Schuetze, an Australian acting as clerk for the “Tibetan Olympics”, said lack of money was threatening the event, which starts Thursday in Dharamshala, home to the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama.

“We’re stripping expenses to the bone and we’re still about to run out of money,” she said. “There’s a desperate need for sponsors, donations — anything.”

The Tibetan games’ organizer, Lobsang Wangyal, warned he did not have enough cash to hand out US$8,000 in promised prize money.

“I’ve got just 40,000 rupees (US$930) and total expenses are expected to be well over 2 million rupees,” said Wangyal, who planned the event as a protest against Chinese rule in his remote Himalayan homeland.

Organizers face other problems as the exiled Tibetan administration in Dharamsala has turned its back on the event, which it views as too insulting to China and likely to damage the prospects of future talks.

The Tibetan administration favors the Dalai Lama’s goal of “meaningful autonomy” for the region within China, rather than the full independence demanded by more radical Tibetans — such as those behind the sports event.

The Dalai Lama’s Tibetan government-in-exile on Wednesday also called for a suspension of protests against China as a mark of respect to victims of this month’s devastating earthquake.

The Dalai Lama has been at pains to assert he supports China as the Olympic host and has distanced himself from the protests that dogged the global torch relay.

The Dharamsala event is also causing embarrassment for its unwilling host India, which has allowed the Tibetan exiles sanctuary as long as they do not use the soil as a springboard for anti-Chinese activities.

But games director Wangyal said the Tibetan Olympics were “not being held to counter the Beijing Olympics.”

Besides Schuetze, volunteers from France, Italy, Peru, Egypt, Japan, Israel, Germany and the US have teamed up to help.

“But it’s hard work without funds,” said Susan Hayano, a US photographer who has been drafted into action to take pictures of the games.

Despite the lack of official enthusiasm for the Dharamsala event, the competitors were upbeat.

“I’ve participated in many anti-China protests and I thought this one’s going to be cool as there’ll be no police to beat us up,” said 22-year-old Tenzin Dhadon, who traveled from Nepal to take part in the javelin.

Ten women and 13 men aged between 18 and 30 have been practicing for the past week for the games and the three top winners will receive hand-crafted gold-plated medals.

However, the mountainous topography has imposed restrictions on some events. The 100m dash has been shortened to just 24m because of lack of flat land.

Chinese-controlled Tibet was rocked by unrest in March, and the Tibetan government-in-exile says 203 Tibetans were killed and 1,000 injured in China’s subsequent crackdown.

China says Tibetan “rioters” and “insurgents” killed 21 people, and has accused the Dalai Lama of trying to sabotage the Beijing Olympics — a charge the Tibetan spiritual leader denies.
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[+/-] : Torchbearers donate $ to earthquake: Torch Relay is a Farce

CCTV reported Olympic torchbearers donate money to Sichuan earthquake.

Watching at near half point of video and look at the torchbearers hands, they did not put any money, their hands are empty, as they pretended donate money.


The Torch Relay is a farce. CCP's made Olympic a political and propaganda tool. CCP Shows off Communist ideology and economic, but hiding oppression in Tibet, torture, kill, imprison Tibetan, and illegal evicted Beijing resident for building stadiums upcoming Olympic. China violated more human rights contrary to its promised.
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[+/-] : Activists carry torch to protest human-rights violations in China

Activists carry torch to protest human-rights violations in China
by Christa Hillstrom May 14, 2008

Like the games in Germany in 1936, and in the Soviet Union in 1980, this year’s Beijing Olympics will go down in history as a gross corruption of the Olympic spirit, said Chen Kai, former member of China’s national basketball team.


Kai, now a U.S. citizen, is part of an international movement called the Human Rights Torch Relay that is spreading this message across 37 countries on five continents, including more than 36 U.S. cities.

Chicago is one of those cities. More than 100 people gathered in Lincoln Park on Saturday to support the torch’s Chicago run— a 2 kilometer symbolic walk around the pond.

The relay is intended to raise awareness about human rights violations in China, such as the persecution of the religious group, Falun Gong.

Eleven speakers offered their support, including Mayor Jim Burke of Dixon, a representative of U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Chicago), and students and activists.

"This torch is hugely significant because it symbolizes our united stance in a worldwide effort to raise awareness about not only the human rights abuses of the Chinese Communist Party, but also the ongoing persecutions of people under corrupt regimes in the countries of Myanmar, North Korea, Zimbabwe, Darfur and wherever unjust practices are being inflicted upon humankind," said Dorothy Brown, Cook County circuit clerk, in a statement read by her representative, Jalyne Strong.

The goals of the relay, organizers said, are to create a platform to speak about injustices perpetrated by the Chinese government.

Sharon Kilarski, spokeswoman for the Relay, said the running of the torch uses global attention on the Olympics to spotlight these injustices, but is not anti-China and does not promote a boycott of the Olympics.

Using the games to promote an image of China that ignores human-rights issues is deceitful, said Kai.

“China has already become ... a cheap prostitute using Olympics as makeup to hide and disguise itself, and now it wants to make love to the world,” he said.

He added that he has hope for his homeland’s future, comparing his own dream of Chinese freedom and unity to that of one of his adopted nation’s heroes, Martin Luther King Jr.

“I dream that one day the Chinese people will free themselves,” he said.

Other “human rights torches” were simultaneously run in Detroit and Evansville, Ind. Saturday, and the next stops on the international tour include cities in Canada and Asia.
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[+/-] : Boycott as the only effective form of protest

Boycott as the only effective form of protest
Posted By Beth Gandy On May 13, 2008

Beth Gandy talks to the Vice President of the European Parliament on Olympic boycott and human rights abuses China

While the Olympic Torch, the manifestation of the Olympic spirit, continues its tour around the world, April 30 marked 100 days until the start of the Games in Beijing.

However many deem China responsible for genocide in Darfur and Tibet and some vehemently uphold that it is in Tibet that the Olympic spirit died. For these reasons, should a boycott of this year’s event in China take place?


Many in the European Parliament stand by this including its Vice-President, Edward McMillan-Scott, the Conservative MEP for the Yorkshire and Humber region. He created the European Democracy Initiative in 2004 and has been actively campaigning for a debate about the prospect of a boycott.

When interviewed by Nouse he shed some light on the situation. “As the founder of the EU’s £100m democracy and human rights programme, I have tried to gauge the capacity to work in the world’s largest country and its biggest tyranny. There is a universal acknowledgement in the human rights community that the situation in China is already worse than it was in 2001 when it was awarded the games by a hopeful IOC (International Olympic Committee).”

Along with organisations such as Amnesty International, McMillan-Scott believes human rights abuse in China is actually worsening as a consequence of the Olympics. In being asked by the IOC to organise “a secure Olympics Games”, the Chinese government has resorted to more arrests of dissidents and more censorship.

The Games have in the past been used to bring estranged countries together. At the Sydney Olympics in 2000, North and South Korea entered the same stadium together during the opening ceremony for the first time, two countries that consistently antagonise each other at the negotiating table. The South Koreans, in the end, used the Olympics as a coming-out event, as it is hoped China will, and it is now a democracy.

It is thought that the Olympics will give the country exposure to the world, to different ideals will hopefully bring about change. As McMillan-Scott said: “thanks to the boycott campaign, the world is watching China.”

He went on to scrutinise Chinese politics saying that “the techniques of repression in the name of the Chinese Communist Party are so effective with their PR company teaching 84 key Beijing spokesmen how to lie about them. China is selling the same techniques to other tyrannies around the world, from Burma to Sudan to Zimbabwe”.

Politicians worldwide will now face a decision over whether to lend legitimacy to a regime with a terrible human rights record, which continues to oppress people and silence those who oppose it. Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, has vowed to boycott the opening ceremony. Hilary Clinton also recently took to the stand in her election plight, urging George Bush’s administration to reconsider its Olympic plans. France’s President Sarkozy has not ruled out a boycott, and while Gordon Brown has said he will go to the closing ceremony of the Games, it is likely that in private he is uncertain about his position.

McMillan-Scott takes a powerful stand supporting the boycott saying: “It is time for the democratic world to stand up and be counted”.

Article printed from Nouse.co.uk: http://www.nouse.co.uk

URL to article: http://www.nouse.co.uk/2008/05/13/boycott-as-the-only-effective-form-of-protest/
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[+/-] : Beijing 2008: The Genocide Games

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