Olympic Torch Sparks Protests

April 7, 2008 in campaigns, china, information, news by Rob Hallam

By now, the olympic flame has made its way through both London and Paris, garnering the attention of both protests and One China ‘anti-protests’ alike. As usual, the BBC has a good writeup of what happened in both London and Paris. Points of interest include:

  • accusations of heavy-handedness against the Met police
  • two attempts to extinguish torch
  • one attempt to steal torch from former Blue Peter presenter Connie Huq
  • deviation from planned route through Chinatown
  • 4 arrested in Paris, 37 arrested in London
  • no boycott from Gordon Brown

Also, in our previous post, we referred to a report by Amnesty International that claimed that China was clamping down on dissidents in the run-up to the Olympic games. It would appear this claim hhas some merit – the day after the report was published, Hu Jia, a prominent human rights activist was jailed for three and a half years for subversion.

With the Olympic flame due to travel to San Francisco next as part of its 20-country worldwide tour, and with the death toll from protests in Tibet ranging from 19 to dozens, what form will further protest take (if any) before it reaches Beijing?