Olympics 2008 news

Anti-China protesters evaded tight security to disrupt yesterday’s Olympic torch ceremony, raising fears that the flame’s procession through London in a fortnight may be similarly hijacked.

Three men from a French media rights group breached a police cordon around Olympia to unfurl a flag demanding a boycott of this summer’s Beijing Olympics. Later ten Tibetan activists staged a protest in the town’s main street before they were detained or chased off by Greek police.

Tenzin Dorjee, a Tibetan activist who was briefly detained during the protest, said: “Later we will do protests in London and Paris.”

Scotland Yard is planning to allocate 2,000 officers and staff, including river, airborne and mounted police, to protect the Olympic flame’s journey from Wembley Stadium to Greenwich on April 6. Human rights activists, supporters of an independent Tibet and critics of China’s support for the murderous regimes in Darfur and Burma are preparing demonstrations along the 31-mile (50km) route.

At Olympia, protesters calling for free speech and a free press in China tried to interrupt an address by Liu Qi, the President of the Olympics Organising Committee and the Communist Party chief in Beijing. As Mr Liu paid tribute to Ancient Greece, the demonstrators unfurled a flag behind him. For a brief moment, television cameras captured the incident before police wrestled one of the men to the ground and led him away in front of the spectators, who included Greek leaders and diplomats.

A smattering of applause came from the spectators, some of whom waved Greek flags while a red-shirted team of Chinese athletes, in Olympia for the ceremony, appeared embarrassed.

“The Olympic flame will radiate light and happiness, peace and friendship, and hope and dreams to the people of China and the whole world,” an unfazed Mr Liu told the crowd.

The Paris-based organisation Reporters Sans Frontières claimed responsibility for the stunt. Three Frenchmen were briefly detained and charged with an “offensive act”. They are due to appear in court on May 29.

The Greek media, afraid of offending the Chinese, played down the protest. Antenna, a television station owned by Minos Kyriakou, the President of the Greek Olympic Committee, edited out the incident from its news footage.

Lambis Nikolaou, Vice-President of the International Olympic Committee, said: “I am furious that these people did not respect the site they were on.”

The hour-long ritual, featuring stylised pagan ceremonies dreamt up by Nazi Germany for the 1936 Berlin Games, proceeded without any further hitches. Under a spring sky, there were just enough of the Sun’s rays focused by a concave metal device, acting like a radar dish, to ignite the mock priestess’s torch.

Times Recommends

• Please help: maimed children of war want their lives back
• Cabal seizes diamond riches to buy power
• White House gatecrashers got to the president