Chaotic protests against China’s human rights policies forced security officials to extinguish the Olympic torch twice during a relay yesterday through Paris that became a tortured procession of stops and starts.
Despite huge police security, with 3,000 officers deployed, at least two activists got within little more than an arm’s length of the flame before they were grabbed by police. Officers tackled numerous protesters to the ground and carried some away. They also squirted tear gas to disperse protesters who blocked the route.
Also taken away was a protester who threw water at the torch but failed to extinguish it.
The first time the procession was interrupted, a crowd of activists waving Tibetan flags confronted the torch on a road along the Seine River. The torch was put out and brought on board a bus to continue partway along the route.
Less than an hour later, the flame was being carried out of a Paris traffic tunnel by an athlete in a wheelchair when the procession was halted by activists who booed and chanted “Tibet.” Once again, the torch was temporarily extinguished and put on a bus.
Activists angry about China’s human-rights record and repression of Tibet managed to circumvent officers on motorcycles, in jogging gear and on inline skates. Demonstrators scaled the Eiffel Tower and hung a banner depicting the Olympic rings as handcuffs.
Police said they did not immediately have a count of the number of arrests. Mireille Ferri, a Green Party official, said she was held by police for two hours because she approached the Eiffel Tower area with a fire extinguisher. In various locations throughout the city, protesters carried Tibetan flags and waved signs reading “the flame of shame.” Riot police squirted tear gas to break up a sit-in protest by about 300 pro-Tibet demonstrators who blocked the torch route.
Meanwhile, Beijing yesterday sought to discredit Tibetan exiles’ claims that security forces had killed protesters in recent unrest, saying a list of 40 people supposedly dead was “totally fake.”
State-controlled media referred to a list of 40 victims it said the Tibetan government-in-exile distributed two weeks ago, saying at least one person had been found alive and the identities of 35 others were impossible to confirm.
“The list is totally fake and meant to conceal the violence masterminded by the Dalai clique,” Xinhua news agency quoted Lhasa police as saying of the list.
The report said one of those allegedly killed was found alive while there were no records of four other people listed, it said.
Also See: Tibet: China’s make-believe world
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