Pro-Tibet Activists Disrupt Olympic Flame Ceremony

By Anthee Carassava | The New York Times
March 25, 2008

Activists angered by China's crackdown in Tibet upstaged an Olympic flame-lighting ceremony here Monday, unfurling a banner and calling for a boycott to the Beijing Summer Games before they were arrested by police.

The incident occurred as Liu Qi, president of the Beijing Organizing Committee, was addressing thousands of spectators, dignitaries and Olympic officials, minutes into a flame-lighting ceremony guarded by 1,000 police officers and commandos concealed in laurel groves.

The brief disruption was broadcast live by Greek national television but China state TV cut away to a prerecorded scene, blocking millions of Chinese views from watching the tumultuous start to their nation's Games.

Authorities released no immediate details of the incident but the Athens chapter of the Paris-based media rights group Reporters Without Borders said three of its members had staged the protest stunt.

The French activists remained detained at a local police station and faced possible criminal charges for evading security, breaking into the ceremony's ancient grounds and flashing a black banner depicting the Games' trademark Olympic rings as handcuffs.

"We cannot let the Chinese government seize the Olympic flame, a symbol of peace without denouncing the dramatic situation of human rights in the country," the group said.

Moments after the incident, a Tibetan woman doused herself in red paint and lay in the road before a torch runner while police arrested two other Tibetan protesters planning a peaceful demonstration about a mile from the ancient sanctuary at the birthplace of the Olympics Games.

"They were stalking me from the moment I touched down to Greece ," said one of those protesters, Tenzin Dorjee, a Tibetan-American activist who arrived Saturday to help orchestrate the peaceful demonstrations.

"All we wanted to do was break into the torch relay and shout that this is a torch of shame as the Chinese government continues to kill hundreds of our people," he said in a telephone interview from the police precinct in Ancient Olympia.

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