Olympic Torch Draws Clashes in London

By JOHN F. BURNS | The New York Times
April 6, 2008

LONDON -- Protesters objecting to China's human rights record clashed with the British police on Sunday as the Olympic torch was carried through London on its way to the summer Olympic Games in Beijing.

Thousands of demonstrators crowded the streets of central London, and the police that at least 30 people were arrested.

Carried by a chain of British sporting stars and entertainment celebrities, the torch completed its eight-hour, 31-mile journey from the new soccer stadium at Wembley in west London to the principal site for the 2010 summer Olympics at Stratford in east London. But along the way, numerous protesters who broke through police barriers were wrestled to the ground as they sought to grab the torch, and the police said one man was beaten off as he ran toward the flame with a fire extinguisher.

What had been billed by the organizers as an occasion to celebrate Olympic sporting ideals turned instead into a daylong contest between China's supporters -- many of them Chinese students and people of Chinese origin living in Britain -- and groups and individuals who gathered to protest China's recent crackdown in Tibet and its wider human rights record, including its labor camps. To get the torch safely to its destination, more than 2,000 police were deployed along the route.

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