Rovereto, Italy, July 23: Demonstrations by Tibetans and Italian Tibet supporters interrupted a friendly soccer match going on between China’s national team and renowned Italian club Juventus, halting the match at different intervals.
The Pro-Tibet demonstrations from different corners of the stadium disrupted the spirit of the game making the Chinese players uneasy to continue with the match.
The Chinese national Olympic soccer team has been on tour around the world as part of its preparation for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. The team is currently in Italy to play friendly matches with country’s three leading soccer clubs.
The protest initiative led by the Italian community of Tibet and Tibetan Association; 12 Tibetans joined by four Italian individual Tibet supporters reached the stadium Quercia of Rovereto in the northern Italy to protest the Chinese national team player.
At five minutes of the second half of the match, a group of Tibetans started their protest actions at different points of the stadium with slogans and unfurling a large banner that read “NO 2008 Olympics in China, Free Tibet”.
Distracted by the disturbances, the Chinese players stopped to play the game and refused to resume unless the banner was removed from the site. Despite strong resistance from the demonstrators, the security personnel finally accompanied two Tibetans with the banner out of the stadium. The game resumed after three minutes.
However, their protest demonstration was not yet over. To everyone’s shock, at 17 minutes to the second half, an Italian woman wearing a Free Tibet campaign shirt climbed over the fence and ran into the field among the players waving Tibetan National Flag.
As the attention of police was distracted to one corner of the stadium by Tibetan protesters, the women managed to take few rounds before she was finally stopped by the police and taken off the filed. The disruption stopped the game for another few minutes for the second time.
Asked about the objective of the whole incident, the Tibetan community president Mr. Thupten Tenzin said, “This protest has different objectives; the action in support of the ongoing indefinite hunger strike in Delhi led by Tibetan Youth Congress, it is a message to millions of Chinese spectators and Chinese regime that our protest will go on continuously, it is also a message of solidarity to Tibetans in Tibet and, finally, it is a message of protest to the world that 2008 Olympic games in China is a big injustice to millions of people who suffer under the Chinese aggression and also a betrayal to the Olympics principles.”
The event was broadcasted live on cable TV around the world; about 170,000000 millions of Chinese in China watched the match on CCTV5, Beijing TV and Shanghai TV. In Italy the national TV and the Maggior national newspaper including the national sports journal gave the news widely.
Similar demonstrations also disturbed the Chinese team’s matches last month in Salt Lake City and Boulder (Colorado) when the Chinese team was on tour in USA.
Juventus won the match defeating the Chinese national team by 4-0.
Based report by Sangpo tenzin (Tibetan Community of Italy: www.comunitatibetana.org
