Pro-Beijing rally lights up Canberra: Olympic torch relay
Anti-Chinese protests during the previous relay legs have sparked a wave of patriotism amongst Chinese at home and abroad, and on Thursday thousands of Chinese chanting “One China” packed the start and finish of the torch relay in the Australian capital.
Police made seven arrests, but for the most part the event was peaceful.
“This is a magnificent day for us today to show that Australia can have a peaceful rally. Watching overseas protests, I felt shamed that they can behave like that,” Wellington Lee, from the Chinese Association of Victoria state, said.
Chinese six-deep lined the 16-km relay route, and hundreds of cars drove around Canberra carrying Chinese flags.
“It was highly organised,” free-Tibet supporter and Australian Greens Senator Bob Brown told Reuters. “Australians will feel a little bit uncomfortable by the fact that communist China came to town and just showed it can buy anything.”
China denied the charge.
“I don’t know how this question is relevant,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said in Beijing.
“If someone is interested in it, then has he asked those people who disrupt and sabotage the torch if there are any organisers and instigators behind them? I think that question is more newsworthy.”
Jiang also defended the outpouring of patriotic fervour among Chinese as a legitimate response to “provocation”.
On Saturday, the torch will be run through Nagano, Japan, where officials have changed the route due to security concerns and complaints from locals.
The route for the torch’s visit to Ho Chi Minh City on April 29 still has not been revealed.
Unlike London, Paris or San Francisco, where torch bearers were jostled by anti-Beijing protesters as they ran, in Canberra a heavy police presence, steel barricades and the city’s wide boulevards ensured runners were unobstructed.
Scuffles broke out between Tibetan protesters and China supporters, who included Australian Chinese and Chinese students in Australia, before the start of the relay and as a few Tibetan protesters tried to block the runners.—Reuters