Olympic Torch's Tibet Visit Is Short and Political

By Jim Yardley | The New York Times
22 June 2008

The visit of the Olympic torch to the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, came and went in about two hours on Saturday. Leaders of the ruling Communist Party probably exhaled once the flame was trundled onto an airplane without incident and flown out of a city that only three months ago had erupted in violent anti-Chinese protests.

But if Chinese leaders were anxious to avoid protests, they did not avoid using the torch relay as a stage to again lash out at the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader. Zhang Qingli, the Communist Party secretary of Tibet, stood beneath the Potala Palace, the historic seat of the Dalai Lama, and bid farewell to the flame with a speech that at times was itself fiery. "Tibet's sky will never change and the red flag with five stars will forever flutter high above it," Mr. Zhang said, according to Reuters. "We will certainly be able to totally smash the splittist schemes of the Dalai Lama clique."

The broadside against the Dalai Lama punctuated an abbreviated torch relay in Lhasa that was partly broadcast on state television and that quickly brought criticism from pro-Tibetan groups outside China. For months, advocates for Tibet have demanded in vain that China not take the torch through Lhasa.

"The torch relay in Lhasa is China's latest episode in a series of betrayals of everything the Olympics represent," Kate Woznow, campaign director of Students for a Free Tibet, said in a statement. "Parading the torch through Lhasa while Tibetans live under virtual martial law is China's most egregious exploitation of the Games yet."

The Tibet Autonomous Region and other Tibetan regions of western China have been under a security crackdown since March, when violent protests broke out in Lhasa and spread. China has accused the Dalai Lama of masterminding the uprising, a charge he denies. Last week, he called on Tibetans not to protest when the torch passed through Lhasa.

Only a few months ago, the controversy in Tibet appeared likely to cast a pall over the Summer Olympics in Beijing. China had designed the global torch relay as the longest and grandest ever. But it had become the occasion for large protests in London, Paris, San Francisco and elsewhere, as pro-Tibet advocates clashed with Chinese supporters. Talk of boycotting the opening ceremonies of the Games spread through European capitals.

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