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AUSTRALIA: Olympic Torch Set to Light Passions

Stephen de Tarczynski

MELBOURNE, Apr 23 2008 (IPS) - With demonstrations and counter-demonstrations anticipated this week when the Olympic torch relay makes its way through Canberra, a leading Chinese student’s association has called for politics to make way for harmony.

"We believe that the Olympics are meant to be apolitical and we think that to utilise it for political purposes isn’t the intent of what the Olympics are supposed to be," says Sai-Chung Chiang, president of the Australia Chinese Student Club’s (ACSC) at the University of Technology, Sydney branch.

But with opposing demonstrators expected to converge en masse to Canberra for Thursday’s event, the likelihood of the relay’s Australian leg passing off without political overtones appears remote.

Since the torch’s journey began – with the lighting ceremony at Olympia one month ago – pro-Tibet protestors have taken advantage of the spotlight trained on the quadrennial relay to demonstrate against what they regard as human rights abuses in the Chinese autonomous region. London, Paris and New Delhi are among those cities that have witnessed violent scenes as the torch progressed.

And with pro-China demonstrators also prevalent during the round-the-world relay, Australian authorities appear to be taking no chances when the torch makes its way to Canberra.

With security a priority, the relay has been shortened – a tactic also employed in other countries – by 4km to a 16km route. Steel crowd barriers are being placed along the length of the course to be traversed by the torch, while police have been granted extra powers, including the authority to stop and search people so as to check for "prohibited items" such as eggs, paint bombs and balls.

Half of the Australian Capital Territory’s police force is being deployed, with back-ups coming from interstate to beef up the increasingly-costly security, expected to hit the AUD two million (1.9 million US dollars) mark – double the anticipated price-tag.

Organisers have also reserved the right to make last-minute alterations to the route if protests get out of control.

However, at this stage the torch is set to pass close to the Chinese Embassy. Ambassador Zhang Junsai has called for Australians to acknowledge the event’s motto of "light the passion, share the dream."

Yet Australia’s foreign affairs minister, Stephen Smith, has voiced his concerns regarding the potential violence. "If people are going to turn up and put a view about the torch, whether it’s in favour of the torch relay or making a point about Tibet, they need to do it in a peaceful way," he told Channel Ten.

And if the words of representatives of one pro-Chinese organisation, the Chinese Students and Scholars Association – who have been quoted by Australian media as saying that "strong men" will be in place to protect the torch from any attackers – are to be taken at face-value, then the security measures taken by authorities may be put to the test. But other organisations from Australia’s Chinese community, including the ACSC, have distanced themselves from such talk.

"We are Chinese organisations that are independent from each other and our club doesn’t endorse anything that he puts forward," says the ACSC’s Chiang.

"We believe that it’s negative for the torch relay to be politicised by any party," he told IPS.

While Chiang argues that "the Olympic Games are to promote global harmony and to give competitors opportunities to compete against each other and to set aside political agendas in the process," his view is not shared by a prominent pro-Tibet group.

George Farley, chairman of the Australia Tibet Council (ATC), dismisses the notion that politics can be separated from sport.

"Politics and sport are inextricably linked and anyone who doesn’t understand that is not in touch with the real world," he argues.

Farley says that the 1936 Berlin Games and the intervention in 2007 of then-prime minister John Howard to ban the Australian cricket team’s tour of Zimbabwe, are just two examples of this link.

Members of the ATC will be travelling to Canberra from around the country to attend a rally on the day of the relay, organised by Canberra’s Tibetan community, and while Farley is confident that pro-Tibet demonstrators will be non-violent, he remains unapologetic for using the opportunity provided by the Olympic torch to protest.

"I don’t want to stop the games. I have nothing against athletes, I have nothing against sport, but we live in a very interdependent world and this exercise that is going on in China now [in the restive region of Tibet and neighbouring provinces] is 100 percent political," says Farley.

He told IPS that China wanted to host the Olympics to signal its growing stature in world affairs. "This is their way of saying ‘we’ve arrived, we’re a politically powerful country in the world.’"

But Farley is critical of what he regards as China’s failure to live up to human rights commitments it made when Beijing won the right to hold the Games. Earlier this month, International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge also called on the host nation to respect commitments it made "to advance the social agenda of China, including human rights."

"We definitely ask China to respect this moral engagement," said Rogge.

China undertook to "give the media free access to all Chinese citizens. They have broken that undertaking and every other undertaking they gave with respect to human rights," says Farley.

But Chiang says that while the ACSC values the human rights issue as one of the "utmost importance", it is also important to remember that China maintains sovereignty over Tibet.

"One thing that we must note is that creating awareness of human rights must be distinguished from separatist movements," he argues.

Unsurprisingly, a similar interpretation of the ongoing troubles in Tibet is not held by Farley. He says that human rights are the main issue for the ATC.

"The prime minister (Kevin Rudd) of this country said in Britain, in America and in China that there are well established human rights abuses in Tibet and we think that the Chinese have got to do something about it," Farley told IPS.