Senior Olympic officials yesterday raised the prospect for the first time of abandoning the international legs of the Beijing Games torch relay, amid a wave of protests targeting the flame overseas.
The protests continued on Monday with a dramatic stunt at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, two days before the torch’s arrival to the city. Police appeared to have been caught cold by the protest, during which demonstrators scooted up the bridge’s cables using climbing gear and unfurled two giant banners.
The torch relay for Beijing and future Games will be reviewed at a meeting of International Olympic Committee (IOC) chiefs in Beijing beginning on Thursday, Gunilla Lindberg, a vice president of the IOC, told reporters.
PHOTO: AP
“I am sure it will be discussed. I think we need to have a full review,” Lindberg told reporters when asked if she thought the IOC would scrap the overseas legs of the Beijing torch relay.
Other senior IOC officials who are in Beijing to prepare for the August Games spoke bitterly of the demonstrations that have marred China’s efforts to stage the most ambitious torch relay ever.
“All I can say is we are desperately disappointed,” IOC board member Kevan Gosper said.
“[Activists] just take their hate out on whatever the issues are at the time,” Gosper said.
Campaigners are trying to raise publicity about Beijing’s controversial rule of Tibet and a wide range of human-rights abuses in China.
On Monday, the torch relay had to be dramatically cut short in Paris due to disruptions by hundreds of protesters. Widespread protests also disrupted the previous day’s leg in London, while activists promised more of the same in Australia, India, Thailand, Japan and elsewhere.
China’s Foreign Ministry yesterday angrily denounced the protests in Europe against the torch relay as “sabotage” by Tibetan separatists.
Gosper and other IOC officials said they would discuss whether to completely abandon the concept of taking the torch around the world for future Games. Gosper said the IOC might prefer a return to a relay program that would see the torch lit in Greece and then transferred to the host country.
Meanwhile, 11 foreign journalists were scheduled to depart yesterday for western China on a tour organized by China’s Foreign Ministry.
The second tour for foreign media of areas that saw mass Tibetan protests recently will fly to Lanzhou, Gansu Province, where more than 1,000 Buddhist monks led protests.
At the end of last month, journalists were taken on a highly regimented three-day trip to Lhasa. Their tour was interrupted by 30 monks at Jokhang Temple, who shouted about the lack of freedom in Tibet and rebutted China’s claims that the Dalai Lama had fomented the riots.
In related news, US Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Hillary Clinton urged President George W. Bush on Monday to boycott the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics.
Clinton, in a statement, cited violent clashes in Tibet and the lack of pressure by China on the Sudanese government to stop “the genocide in Darfur.”
“I believe President Bush should not plan on attending the opening ceremonies in Beijing, absent major changes by the Chinese government,” the New York senator said.
South Korea has adjusted its electronic arrival card system to no longer list Taiwan as a part of China, a move that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said would help facilitate exchanges between the two sides. South Korea previously listed “Taiwan” as “Taiwan (China)” in the drop-down menus of its online arrival card system, where people had to fill out where they came from and their next destination. The ministry had requested South Korea make a revision and said it would change South Korea’s name on Taiwan’s online immigration system from “Republic of Korea” to “Korea (South),” should the issue not be
Tainan, Taipei and New Taipei City recorded the highest fines nationwide for illegal accommodations in the first quarter of this year, with fines issued in the three cities each exceeding NT$7 million (US$220,639), Tourism Administration data showed. Among them, Taipei had the highest number of illegal short-term rental units, with 410. There were 3,280 legally registered hotels nationwide in the first quarter, down by 14 properties, or 0.43 percent, from a year earlier, likely indicating operators exiting the market, the agency said. However, the number of unregistered properties rose to 1,174, including 314 illegal hotels and 860 illegal short-term rental
Both sides of the Taiwan Strait share a political foundation based on the “1992 consensus” and opposition to Taiwanese independence, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) today said during her meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). Both sides of the Strait should plan and build institutionalized and sustainable mechanisms for dialogue and cooperation based on that foundation to make peaceful development across the Strait irreversible, she said. Peace is a shared moral value across the Strait, and both sides should move beyond political confrontation to seek institutionalized solutions to prevent war, she said. Mutually beneficial cross-strait relations are what the
ECONOMIC COERCION: Such actions are often inconsistently applied, sometimes resumed, and sometimes just halted, the Presidential Office spokeswoman said The government backs healthy and orderly cross-strait exchanges, but such arrangements should not be made with political conditions attached and never be used as leverage for political maneuvering or partisan agendas, Presidential Office spokeswoman Karen Kuo (郭雅慧) said yesterday. Kuo made the remarks after China earlier in the day announced 10 new “incentive measures” for Taiwan, following a landmark meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) in Beijing on Friday. The measures, unveiled by China’s Xinhua news agency, include plans to resume individual travel by residents of Shanghai and China’s Fujian
RSS