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Chaos, protests greet Olympic torch in Paris

5 min read

PARIS (AP) – From start to finish, there was no respite from the protests. Only moments after the first Olympic torchbearer began his descent down the Eiffel Tower, a protester shouted “Freedom for the Chinese!” and lunged toward the flame. The torch hadn’t even reached solid ground yet – it was still on the tower’s first floor – and already havoc had broken out at Monday’s torch rally in Paris.

Later, protesters booed trucks emblazoned with the names of Olympic corporate sponsors. They chained themselves to railings. They hurled water at the flame and hung banners depicting the Olympic rings as handcuffs from atop the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame cathedral.

Eventually, Chinese organizers simply gave up: They canceled the final third of what they had envisioned as a triumphant jog past world famous landmarks like the Louvre, the Seine River bridges and the Place de la Concorde. They put the torch on board a bus and sent it to its final destination, a sports stadium, where more protesters waited.

Citywide, the thousands of demonstrators slowed the relay to a stop-start crawl, with impassioned displays of anger over China’s holding of the Olympic Games, its grip on Tibet and human rights failings, defying 3,000 officers – some deployed in jogging gear and inline skates.

The Interior Ministry said police made 18 arrests. Officers sprayed tear gas to break up a sit-in by about 300 pro-Tibet demonstrators who blocked the route.

Police tackled protesters who ran at the torch. At least two activists got almost within arm’s length before they were grabbed by police. Near the Louvre, police grabbed a protester who approached the flame with a fire extinguisher.

One detained demonstrator, handcuffed in a police bus, wrote “liber” on her right palm and “te” on the other – spelling the French word for “freedom” – and held them up to the window.

Five times, Chinese officials in dark glasses and tracksuits who guard the symbolic torch extinguished it and retreated to the safety of a bus – the last time for good until the vehicle had driven them to the stadium at the end of the route. There, a torchbearer ran the last 15 feet on foot.

Outside, a handful of French activists supporting Tibet had a fist-fight with pro-Chinese demonstrators. The French activists spat on them and shouted, “Fascists!”

With protesters slowing down the relay, a planned stop at Paris City Hall was canceled. Earlier, French officials had hung a banner declaring support for human rights on the building’s facade.

In San Francisco, where the torch is due to arrive Wednesday, three protesters wearing harnesses and helmets climbed up the Golden Gate Bridge and tied the Tibetan flag and two banners to its cables. The banners read “One World One Dream. Free Tibet” and “Free Tibet.”

A spokesman for the French Olympic Committee, Denis Masseglia, estimated one-third of the 80 people, many of them athletes, who had been slated to carry the torch did not get to do so.

On a bus carrying French athletes, one man in a truck suit shed a tear as protesters pelted the vehicle with eggs, bottles and soda cans.

At the start, on the Eiffel Tower’s first floor, Green Party activist Sylvain Garel lunged for the first torchbearer, former hurdler Stephane Diagana, before security officials pulled him back.

“It is inadmissible that the games are taking place in the world’s biggest prison,” Garel said later.

Outside parliament, as the torch passed, 35 lawmakers protested, shouting “Freedom for Tibet.”

“The flame shouldn’t have come to Paris,” said protester Carmen de Santiago, who had “free” painted on one cheek and “Tibet” on the other.

Pro-China advocates carrying national flags held counter-demonstrations.

“The Olympic Games are about sports. It’s not fair to turn them into politics,” said Gao Yi, a Chinese second-year doctoral student in Paris in computer sciences.

France’s former sports minister, Jean-Francois Lamour, stressed that though the torch was snuffed out at times, the Olympic flame itself still burned in a lantern where it is kept overnight and on airplane flights. A Chinese official said that flame was used to re-light the torch each time it was brought aboard the bus.

Pro-Tibet advocate Christophe Cunniet said he and other Tibet advocates were detained after they waved Tibetan flags, threw flyers and tried to block the route. Cunniet said police kicked him, cutting his forehead.

At least one athlete, former Olympic champion Marie-Jose Perec, was supportive of demonstrators. She told French television: “I think it is very, very good that people have mobilized like that.”

But other athletes and sports officials were bitterly dismayed.

“A symbol like that, carried by young people who want to deliver a message of peace, should be allowed to pass,” said the head of the French Olympic Committee, Henri Serandour.

International Olympic Committee spokeswoman Giselle Davies agreed. “We respect that right for people to demonstrate peacefully, but equally there is a right for the torch to pass peacefully and the runners to enjoy taking part in the relay,” she said.

Police had hoped to prevent the chaos that marred the relay in London a day earlier. There, police had repeatedly scuffled with activists and 37 people were arrested.

Beijing organizers criticized the London protests as a “disgusting” form of sabotage by Tibetan separatists.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has left open the possibility of boycotting the Olympic opening ceremony depending on how the situation evolves in Tibet. Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said Monday that was still the case.

Activists have been protesting along the torch route since the flame embarked on its 85,000-mile journey from Ancient Olympia in Greece to the Aug. 8-24 Beijing Olympics.

The round-the-world trip is the longest in Olympic history, and is meant to highlight China’s rising economic and political power.

Activists have seized on it as a platform for their causes.

The relay also is expected to face demonstrations in New Delhi and possibly elsewhere on its 21-stop, six-continent tour before arriving in mainland China May 4.

Copyright Associated Press 2008

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