Laying down an ambitious route around the globe, China planned the torch relay for the 2008 Olympics to go well beyond the event’s normal role as an inoffensive, symbolic reminder that the next Games were fast approaching.
This year, the record-breaking global circuit was intended to be an audacious preview of an Olympic Games that Beijing has designed to show off the best that a rising China can offer.
But after two days of raucous protests in London and Paris during which officials had to extinguish the flame five times Monday to protect it, the latest relay risks devolving into a defiant four-month slog that could put China into daily public-relations combat with its critics.
A decision to halt the relay through Paris on Monday clearly embarrassed Olympic and Chinese officials. And they were taking steps to head off another firestorm when the torch makes its lone North American stop on Wednesday in San Francisco.
U.S. Olympic Committee Chairman Peter Ueberroth will leave Olympic meetings in Beijing earlier than planned so he can help San Francisco officials cope with expected demonstrations there. On Monday, three protesters climbed the Golden Gate Bridge and tied the Tibetan flag and two banners to its cables.
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One of the banners read “One World One Dream. Free Tibet,” playing off the Beijing Olympic motto of “One World One Dream.”
Ueberroth issued a statement Monday night calling on San Francisco “to show its character, hospitality and commitment to peace and tolerance.”
“When it accepted the honor of hosting the Olympic flame,” Ueberroth said, “San Francisco also accepted two important responsibilities. It must provide a proper forum for the peaceful expression of opinions and dissent. And it must safely and respectfully welcome the flame and honor the U.S. athletes and other participants who will carry the torch.”
Sudan also a heated issue
The Olympics had long been expected to spark protests because of what many believe are China’s abuses of human rights both domestically, especially in Tibet, and in its trade relationship with Sudan, which critics say has contributed to genocide in Sudan’s Darfur region.
Tibet has been a particular focus since demonstrations began March 10 in the regional capital, Lhasa, and spread to other places in western China, leading to violent clashes with government forces. The official death toll in Lhasa alone was 22, a figure that Tibetan activists said was a fraction of the true toll.
The Olympic torch became a target of anti-China protests at the March 24 lighting ceremony in ancient Olympia, Greece, and the growing intensity of the demonstrations in London and Paris has made for an unprecedented spectacle as the torch relay heads toward the Aug. 8 opening ceremony in Beijing.
It led IOC President Jacques Rogge to go beyond what he had called “silent diplomacy” with China.
In an address Monday to the Association of National Olympic Committees, Rogge said, “The International Olympic Committee has expressed its serious concern and calls for a rapid peaceful resolution in Tibet.
“Violence … is not compatible with the values of the torch relay or the Olympic Games,” he said.
The depth of expressed anger toward China may lead more heads of state to consider boycotting the opening ceremony, as German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said she will do, and as French President Nicolas Sarkozy has publicly hinted.
While there has been talk of athletes boycotting the Beijing Games, there seems to be almost no support among any nation’s political or Olympic leaders for such an action.
But Olympic officials have been taken aback by seeing the torch turn into a symbol of animosity toward China, which had billed the relay as the “Journey of Harmony.”
“The Olympic flame belongs to the world, and these actions are a serious violation of the Olympic spirit,” Beijing Olympic officials said in a Monday news release.
On Sunday in London, demonstrators tried both to grab the torch from one of the runners and to put the flame out with fire extinguishers, leading officials to make last-minute changes in the route. Some torch bearers were jeered for participating.
Officials canceled Monday’s final leg of the relay in Paris after they purposely extinguished the torch and put it on a bus five times rather than risk having it snatched by crowds. Protesters threw water at the torch and hung banners on the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame Cathedral that showed the Olympic rings as handcuffs.
Ambitious but vulnerable
The very design that was intended to make China’s Olympic torch relay go down in history now makes it especially vulnerable to protests: It is longer, more international and more ambitious than anything before.
The route is a record-breaker, with 21,880 relay runners across six continents, and a controversial stop on the peak of Mt. Everest. A second lantern has been set aside in preparation for a moment, likely in May, when climbing conditions would allow a team to make an attempt on the world’s highest peak.
Beijing Olympic authorities gave no hint that they would change the route, which is expected to draw further protests in India and Australia. The Chinese undoubtedly will be relieved when it appears in Chinese territory May 2.
Chinese authorities would have a hard time downgrading the importance of the relay because they have spent months heavily promoting it.
The national evening news has featured a steady drumbeat of coverage on people chosen to carry the torch in China and abroad, the technical preparations and the scale of the undertaking.
When it arrived in Beijing from Greece on March 31, on a specially chartered and painted Air China flight, the torch occupied the front page of state papers across the country — as it did the following day, and the day after that.
Beijing authorities are reluctant to give any ground to Olympic demonstrators.
If they alter the route to avoid controversy, they risk emboldening activists in the months ahead. And yet, if they do nothing, they face a road show of their hot-button international issues: Tibetan unrest, human-rights conditions and the political status of Taiwan.
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The protests are likely to incite a fresh wave of nationalist backlash in China. Web sites and online forums are filled with angry defenses of China’s policies, such as the site www.anti-cnn.com, which was set up, it says, “to expose the lies and distortions in the Western media.”
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