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Tibet Protest at Olympic Ceremony
By Anthee Carassava
The New York Times
Monday 31 March 2008
Athens - Greek officials handed over the Olympic flame to organizers of the
Beijing Summer Games on Sunday, but demonstrators angered by China's clampdown
in Tibet sought to disrupt the ceremony, evading heavy security to unfurl protest
banners.
Shouting "Free Tibet" and flashing red banners blaring "Stop
Genocie in Tibet," the demonstrators charged into a police cordon, trying
to block the torch runner carrying the Olympic flame from making the final 100-meter
run into an Athens stadium.
Backed by riot squads, scores of police officers detained 10 of an estimated
15 demonstrators, taking them to Greece's national police headquarters
minutes after the ceremony began.
Athens mounted a major security operation for the event, deploying more than
1,000 police officers and changing the flame's route at least three times
to prevent activists from upstaging Sunday's ceremony.
Yet even before the hand-over began, three supporters of the Falun Gong spiritual
movement were detained outside the sprawling all-marble Panathinaiko Stadium
for distributing leaflets on the movement, which is outlawed in China.
"They continue to remain in police custody and we have been given no
reason by the authorities for their arrest," the Falun Gong supporters'
lawyer, Ignatios Tatoulis, said.
It remained unclear whether the Tibet demonstrators and Falun Gong supporters
would be charged.
Still, Sunday's scuffles capped a smattering of anti-China protests staged
across Greece since a group of French protesters disrupted the globally televised
flame-lighting ceremony at the site of the ancient Olympic Games earlier this
week.
China's Communist leadership has come under heavy criticism since a series
of demonstrations turned violent in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa on March 10,
the 49th anniversary of a failed uprising against Communist rule.
Beijing says 22 people have died in the clashes but the toll has since then
varied and been impossible to confirm because of a news blackout imposed by
China on the country's interior.
The Olympic Games in Beijing are expected to attract 500,000 tourists and four
billion television viewers.
The Olympic flame, the iconic symbol of the Games, will arrive in Beijing on
March 31 before taking off on the longest, most ambitious round-the-world torch
relay in Olympic history: a 130-day trip that will cross all five continents
and climb up the summit of Mount Everest before finally arriving at the National
Stadium in Beijing for the Aug. 8 opening ceremony.
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