An envoy of the Dalai Lama urged Beijing to cancel “provocative” plans to run the Olympic torch relay through Tibet, but China promptly dismissed his call yesterday as a bid to sabotage the Games.
Meanwhile a report said China would begin putting people on trial this month over the unrest — the biggest challenge to Chinese rule in Tibet in decades — as Beijing has moved to ensure no repeat before the August Olympics.
Lodi Gyari, an envoy of exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, told a US Congressional hearing on Thursday that Beijing’s communist leaders should abandon plans to bring the Olympic flame through Tibet.
“This idea of taking the torch through Tibet, I really think, should be canceled precisely because that would be very deliberately provocative and very insulting after what has happened,” he said.
The torch will pass through Tibet next month to go up Mount Everest, and then again when it goes through Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, in June. Chinese officials have already pledged tight security for the Tibetan legs.
Gyari said that if the Chinese authorities went ahead with the torch run in Tibet, it would “bring more adverse publicity” to the Olympic Games in Beijing — which China wants to be a national showcase of its rising standing.
“The Olympic flame is the highest symbol of the Olympic spirit. It represents peace, friendship and progress,” Zhu Jing, a spokeswoman for the Beijing Olympic organizing committee, said yesterday in response to Gyari.
“The fact that the ‘Dalai clique’ calls for a cancelation of the torch relay has exposed the reality of its attempt to sabotage the Beijing Olympic Games,” she said.
Protests in Lhasa claimed their first lives on March 14, amid fierce anti-Chinese demonstrations to mark the anniversary of a failed 1959 uprising.
Beijing says rioters killed 18 civilians and two police officers. Exiled Tibetan leaders have put the death toll from the Chinese crackdown at 135 to 140 Tibetans, with another 1,000 injured and many detained.
The Tibet Commerce newspaper said late on Thursday that more than 1,000 people had either been caught by police or turned themselves in.
Trials of at least some would begin next month, the paper reported, citing the deputy chief of the Lhasa Communist Party, Wang Xiangming.
Meanwhile, Beijing’s plans for the London leg of the Olympic torch relay suffered a double blow on Thursday when it emerged that the Chinese ambassador to London and the BBC’s most senior journalist have abandoned plans to take part in the event tomorrow.
With human-rights groups preparing to stage mass rallies along the 50km route, the Chinese confirmed Fu Ying had withdrawn from running a leg of the relay.
Mark Byford, deputy director general of the BBC, has also backed out of a commitment to carry the torch amid concerns that his participation would compromise the corporation’s journalistic standards.
Paris-based Reporters Without Borders said yesterday that International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Jacques Rogge had told members that China’s policies toward Tibet had no bearing on this summer’s Games and dismissed talk of a boycott.
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