BEIJING: The 2008 Olympic torch relay was engulfed in controversy on Friday as critics slammed Beijing’s plans for stops in Taiwan and Tibet, as well as a side trip over Mount Everest.
The relay ahead of the Beijing Games is scheduled to pass through 22 cities in five continents outside China, as well as Taipei, Hong Kong and Macau. It will then move on through 113 cities across China’s 31 provinces and regions. China’s media heralded the route unveiled late Thursday as the “Relay of Friendship,” but it sparked an immediate outcry overseas. Taiwan’s National Olympic Committee said it did not want to play any part in the relay, denouncing it as “unacceptable” political interference, due to longstanding political rivalries. Tibetan independence activists also slammed the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for helping China reinforce its control over Tibet.
Five Americans were due to be expelled after staging an illegal demonstration at Mount Everest base camp in which they called for Tibetan independence and voiced outrage at the torch passing through the Himalayan region. They were detained after Wednesday unfurling banners demanding a “free Tibet” and protesting against the plans to take the torch to the top of the mountain. China has ruled Tibet since sending troops in to “liberate” it in 1951 and has violently suppressed a number of uprisings since then. Tibetan independence activists called on the IOC to speak out on behalf of the Americans, but IOC members refused to comment, saying the organisation did not engage in political issues.
China announced Friday that the Americans would be released and expelled from the country. But Lhadon Tethong, the executive director of US-based Students For a Free Tibet, which organised the Everest campaign, said more protests would come. “We will be taking every opportunity to use the Olympics to spotlight China’s brutal rule, and we will challenge the Chinese at every turn,” she told AFP. She accused the IOC of backing China’s “political agenda” with the Games. “We are extremely upset that the IOC is clearly supporting the Chinese political agenda with the Games,” she said in Kathmandu. “They (the Chinese) are using the Games to strengthen and legitimise their claims over Tibet.” Tsering Thadup, who runs the Tibetan Refugee Centre in Kathmandu, said China should lose the right to host the Games.
“China should not be allowed to hold the Olympics as they have been continually violating human rights in Tibet,” he said. “The Chinese nation has the fine tradition of keeping promises. We do not agree to any practice or behaviour that breaches promises or a consensus previously reached,” said Jiang. Taiwan has maintained in the past that it would consider accepting the torch relay only if the leg were part of the international section, sandwiched between two sovereign countries. But Taipei was unhappy at being asked to hand off the torch to Hong Kong, part of China, which it said was tantamount to undermining Taiwan’s self-rule status.
“The Beijing authorities are attempting to turn the relay into a domestic route and therefore dwarf our status. This is absolutely unacceptable,” Taiwan Olympic Committee chairman Tsai Chen-wei said in a statement. Members of Taiwan’s opposition Kuomintang party, which favours improved ties with Beijing, backed the torch relay, including Taipei mayor Hau Lung-bin.
