By AFP
Beijing : China on Tuesday said activists were out to hijack the Olympics, as the torch started a world tour already drawing protests including US lawmakers trying to prevent George W. Bush from attending the Games’ opening ceremony.
Pro-Tibet activists, human rights campaigners and groups seeking to end the crisis in Darfur say they plan protests during the relay, which is scheduled to last 130 days and cover 137,000 kilometres (85,000 miles).
“No plot to hijack the Beijing Olympics deserves the moral high ground it claims,” the official China Daily said Tuesday in an editorial. China maintains that protesters are attempting to politicise the August 8-24 Olympics and that they are doomed to fail, claiming most people around the world are opposed to linking controversies with the showpiece events. “Sensational as they are, the calls to politicise the Olympics are a blasphemy against the Olympic spirit,” the China Daily said. The Chinese foreign ministry also hit out at groups and individuals calling for protests and a boycott of the Olympics.
“If there is any disruption of the torch relay, it is a provocation against the charters of the Olympic Games and a challenge to all people who love peace and the Olympic spirit,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said.
In Washington, US lawmakers introduced a bill seeking to bar President Bush from the opening ceremony, which he plans to attend despite calls for a boycott by world leaders.
The bill was “to prohibit Federal government officials and employees from attending the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games held in communist China based upon communist China brutalizing protesters in Tibet,” according to a copy.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said she will not attend the ceremony, and French President Nicolas Sarkozy has not ruled out following suit. As controversy swirled, the torch made its way from Beijing to Almaty, Kazakhstan, for the first leg of its global journey on Tuesday.
Rights groups have said they will focus protests on the London leg on Sunday, Paris on Monday and San Francisco, the only stop in the United States, next Wednesday, April 9.
A major rallying cry for protesters is Tibet, whose government-in-exile says up to 140 people have died in a crackdown in more than three weeks of unrest and protests against Chinese rule of the Himalayan region. China denies any people have died in the crackdown, and instead says that Tibetan rioters killed 18 innocent civilians and two policemen.
Chinese police also said Tuesday that Tibetans were planning suicide attacks as part of a stepped-up campaign for independence ahead of the Beijing Olympics. “To our knowledge, the next plan of the Tibetan independence forces is to organise suicide squads to launch violent attacks,” Chinese public security ministry spokesman Wu Heping said. The United States later rejected any suggestion that Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama would sanction suicide attacks. The torch relay, billed as the most ambitious of all time, will include an ascent of Mount Everest in May and a passage through Tibet in June. Officials in Beijing and Tibet have previously said they would prevent any security breaches for the legs in the Himalayan region.
But outside China the situation has already proved different. Last week, protesters defied tight security to disrupt the torch-lighting ceremony in Ancient Olympia. China branded the protests in Greece “shameful” and has put pressure on cities along the international route to ensure smooth progress of the torch.
On Monday, China staged an elaborate and tightly guarded ceremony for the torch relay in central Tiananmen Square attended by top leaders including President Hu Jintao.