Olympic torch
Sports or politics?
I wonder if there is torch in Taiwan, what will we do?
Here is the route.
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/04/07/oly.torchrelay/index.html#cnnSTCOther1
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(CNN) — The Olympic torch relay was disrupted Monday by protesters in Paris demonstrating against the Chinese government, causing authorities to extinguish the flame three times and put the torch on a bus, according to The Associated Press.
The torch was being carried by a wheelchair athlete when it was halted and extinguished for a second time due to demonstrators shouting, according to AP.
The procession was interrupted for a third time when police spotted a crowd of demonstrators waiting for the torch on a bridge as they approached.
Backup flames, also lit from the birthplace of the ancient games in Olympia, Greece, are with the relay at all times to relight the torch.
Earlier protesters close to the River Seine forced authorities to put the torch out and take to a bus so they could continue the relay.
Agencies report that the relay has now resumed but that there have confrontations between the authorities and demonstrators. Police have taken numerous protesters away, AP said, also using tear gas to remove demonstrators who lay in the road and tried to block the relay route.
The incidents came one day after human-rights activist demonstrators made the torch’s journey through London more like running the gauntlet than a journey of celebration, as UK police made more than two dozen arrests.
The Paris leg of the torch relay departed the Eiffel Tower, carried by 400-meter athlete Stephane Diagana, at around 1030 GMT (0630 ET). It was due to be carried through the boulevards of the French capital, passing landmarks including l’Arc d’Triomphe, the Place de la Concord, The Louvre and Notre Dame.
Jim Bittermann, CNN’s senior European correspondent based in Paris, said that while it was hard to gauge numbers, it looked like thousands of demonstrators had taken to the streets — although some were Chinese backing the Olympics.
“There was a small punch-up between some supporters of Tibet and some supporters of the Olympics,” he added.
Paris police had conceived a security strategy to keep the torch in a safe zone during its 17-mile (28 km) journey — significantly shorter than the 48-kilometer (31-mile) relay undertaken in London Sunday.
The plan was for the torchbearers to be encircled by several hundred officers, some in riot police vehicles and on motorcycles, others on rollerblades and on foot. Closest to the torchbearer would be the Chinese torch escorts, with Paris police on rollerblades moving around them. French firefighters in jogging shoes would encircle the rollerbladers, while motorcycle police would form the outer layer of security.
French Olympic champion Marie-Josee Perec, Portugal forward Pedro Miguel Pauleta and badminton player Pi Hongyan are among the featured torch bearers, although some torch bearers were expected to wear protest buttons.
The head of Reporters Without Borders, a French-based group that disrupted last month’s torch lighting ceremony in Olympia, Greece, had told CNN before the relay began that his group has planned “something spectacular” to protest the relay.
At least six groups have permits to protest along the route, but only for demonstrations well away from the flame’s path. The Paris mayor has ordered a banner over City Hall that reads “Paris City of Human Rights.”
The protests have been timed to coincide with the run-up to the Summer Olympic Games in Beijing in August.
On Monday, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said all options remained open for Paris concerning a possible boycott of the opening of the Beijing Olympics, AP reported.
In London Sunday, the Olympic torch was met with widespread protests and scuffles between demonstrators and police as thousands turned out to protest Olympic host China’s human rights record and its recent clampdown on Tibet. 
Some demonstrators threw themselves at the torch, and at least one tried to snatch it away during the 48-kilometer (31-mile) relay. Another tried to put out the flame with a fire extinguisher. They were quickly pushed back and cuffed by Metropolitan Police, which said its officers made 36 arrests on a variety of charges.
Beijing Olympic spokesman condemned “attempts to sabotage” the London relay, according to China’s state-run Xinhua news agency. The official was not named in the article.
China has come under international criticism because of its crackdown last month on protesters calling for democratic freedoms and self-rule in Tibet and neighboring Chinese provinces.
Chinese authorities have denied those allegations and have accused the Dalai Lama of instigating violence among his followers — an allegation he rejects. U.S. and other Western leaders have called on China to provide civil rights and freedoms to those in Tibet and to enter peaceful discussions aimed at resolving the crisis.
In most cases, however, the torch passed through London without incident. Tessa Jowell, Britain’s Olympics minister, called it “a demanding day for the police” and for the Beijing Organizing Committee, but also noted thousands had come out “to welcome the torch.”
China: Link to Darfur ‘unfair’
Here is the response of China government.
In my view, I think Spielberg’s decision is effective. Since China government try to tell the international public what they have put effort on human rights, anyone who makes a statement on that issue can change the image of China. Though there is no relationship between the sports and politics, Spielberg can use his quitting to make China government beware of the human rights.
BEIJING, China (AP) – Efforts to link China to the Darfur crisis are “irresponsible and unfair,” a government spokesman said in comments published Thursday, following director Steven Spielberg’s decision to drop out as a Beijing Olympics adviser on human rights grounds.
The Hollywood heavyweight had been brought in as an artistic adviser to the opening and closing ceremonies of Games, but said he will not participate because he felt China wasn’t doing enough to pressure Sudan into ending the humanitarian crisis in the Darfur region.
“The Darfur issue is not China’s internal affair and was not started by China. Linking the two is nonsense; it is also irresponsible and unfair,” an unidentified spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in the U.S. was quoted as saying in the state-run Global Times newspaper.
“Many people think the Olympics are a sports event but the West wants to bind sports and politics, this is a clumsy trick,” said the highly nationalistic daily, published by the Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily.
Chinese officials have consistently said they opposed any attempt to “politicize” the highly anticipated Olympics, which begin August 8. But neither the Foreign Ministry or the Beijing organizing committee have responded specifically to Spielberg’s decision.
Spielberg had indicated as early as August that he might not take part in the ceremonies. The director said he had given up hope that China would take a more aggressive approach toward Sudan.
China is believed to have special influence with the Islamic regime because it buys two-thirds of the country’s oil exports while selling it weapons and defending Khartoum in the U.N. Security Council.
Fighting between government-backed militia and rebels in Darfur has killed more than 200,000 people and left an estimated 2.5 million displaced since 2003.
“While China’s representatives have conveyed to me that they are working to end the terrible tragedy in Darfur, the grim realities of the suffering continue unabated,” Spielberg said in a statement.
Beijing has invested billions of dollars and its national prestige into what it hopes will be a glorious showcase of China’s rapid development from impoverished agrarian nation to rising industrial power.
Yet it has been unable to turn back a rising tide of negative global opinion that joins concerns over the city’s notorious pollution, snarled traffic and displacement of people for the construction of Olympic venues.
In recent days, the U.S. Congress and a coalition of Nobel Peace Prize winners, politicians and elite athletes have also lobbied Beijing over Darfur.
Actress Mia Farrow and other activists delivered an open letter addressed to Chinese President Hu Jintao at the Chinese Mission to the United Nations in New York on Tuesday.
