Tibetan Uprising

Security prompts a quiet procession

IHT
April 17, 2008

NEW DELHI: The Olympic torch made a strange and lonely procession through central Delhi on Thursday, with the event so comprehensively overshadowed by fears of the anti-Chinese protests that had marred its appearances in other cities that no members of the public were allowed close enough to witness it.

The 70-odd Indian athletes and celebrities who carried the torch down Delhi’s widest avenue were outnumbered by thousands of watchful members of India’s security forces, who managed to stamp out any pomp and excitement, transforming the occasion instead into a tense security operation rather than a celebration.

The authorities cordoned off much of the heart of New Delhi for hours ahead of the event, anxious to avoid the disruption that plagued earlier legs of the troubled torch relay, and concerned that protesters from India’s large Tibetan community would seize the opportunity to sabotage the occasion.

India has the world’s largest population of exiled Tibetans, about 100,000, who fled their homeland after China crushed an uprising there in the 1950s, and their presence had made Olympics organizers particularly anxious about this stage of the torch’s journey to Beijing, where the games will begin Aug. 8.

The relay itself was not disturbed by demonstrations but there were numerous small attempts to breach the heavy security in the streets around the route.

One group of seven protesters ran toward the barricades near India Gate, just before the event began, before being stopped by police officers wielding sticks, and bundled into a waiting truck. Two, who tried to resist detention by sitting on the road, were hit on their feet by the police with the wooden sticks. Limping, but still shouting “Free Tibet,” they, too, were lifted into the back of an open truck and driven away from the barriers.

As the relay began, the roads around Rajpath had been entirely cleared of cars and pedestrians, and an unusual peace descended on this large stretch of a capital, which is home to around 16 million people. The loud singing of birds, usually drowned out by the roar of city traffic, was audible.

Thursday morning, hundreds of Tibetan protesters marched through central Delhi shouting “Die for Freedom.” Demonstrators lit their own torch at the spot where the ashes of the Indian pacifist Mahatma Gandhi are buried and mounted a parallel, peaceful torch relay through central Delhi.

Many students and large numbers of Tibetans who had traveled from across India to join the march walked through the city, carrying banners declaring “Justice Raped In Tibet” and “Gold medal for China in Torture.”

The noise and excitement of the march was in stark contrast to the scenes of highly controlled calm along the route taken by the Olympic flame.

Despite the heavy police presence, Tibetan exiles still managed to spring small surprise protests both near the airport during the night, shortly after the torch arrived from Pakistan, and later at the five-star hotel in central Delhi where the torch was kept before the relay. Several protesters were arrested as they tried to break through police barriers surrounding the hotel.

The demonstrators’ repeated success in breaching heavy security in the days before the torch’s arrival embarrassed the Delhi police and intensified the determination of organizers to ensure that there would be no disruption to the relay run. The run was shortened from the original nine kilometers, or five and a half miles, to just over two kilometers, because of security concerns.

The route along Rajpath, the imposing avenue that cuts through the heart of British colonial Delhi, is - even in normal circumstances - one of the capital’s highest security regions because of its proximity to numerous important government buildings. This stretch of road is used for India’s annual Republic Day Parade, when thousands of members of the public are permitted to buy tickets to watch the Indian government and multiple military regiments pass by in a ceremonial procession.

The atmosphere for the torch relay was very different, devoid of the usual sense of festivity. The streets around the route were empty of all vehicles aside from police trucks and vans. Members of the public were not allowed near the route, which began at Rashtrapati Bhavan, the red sandstone presidential palace designed by the British colonial architect Edward Lutyens, and ended at another Delhi landmark, the war memorial at India Gate. Instead only selected guests and a few schoolchildren were permitted to attend, alongside journalists.

Delhi police and paramilitary officers armed with rifles and wooden sticks lined the avenue; policemen wearing blue tracksuits were gathered by the side of the road and several hundred anti-riot officers wearing helmets and carrying plastic shields were waiting in side streets.

There was a palpable nervousness among city officials in the days leading up to the event.

Delhi’s ability to ensure a smooth passage for the torch was seen as vital to the reputation of its government and the police, but unnamed police officials informally admitted to Indian news media that they found it extremely difficult to avert spot protests from multiple small bands of well-organized campaigners.

Central Delhi was severely disrupted by the security measures throughout the day, particularly in the area around Rajpath. Commuters struggled to make their way to work, with many roads in the heart of the city barricaded. Newspapers noted that the unprecedented levels of security had wholly detracted from the spirit of the occasion.

An editorial in The Hindustan Times, a national daily newspaper, highlighted the difficulty experienced by the Indian government in recent days, as it struggled to establish how best to hold what was meant to be a celebratory, public occasion without allowing the event to be overtaken by protests.

“One gets the feeling that New Delhi simply wants to get the whole business over and done with as quickly as possible,” the paper concluded.

Several Indian celebrities and sports stars, including Sachin Tendulkar, the country’s most popular cricketer, had withdrawn from the event, and two more invited athletes decided not to join the team of 70 torchbearers, just hours before the relay was due to begin, citing personal reasons. The Asian Age noted in another editorial that many Olympics enthusiasts had distanced themselves from the event in protest at the unprecedented security for the torch. “They feel that the direct fallout from the ’stifling security cover’ is a curtailment of the spirit of freedom that defines the philosophy of the Olympics,” the paper said. The parallel torch protest held Thursday morning passed peacefully. Police had granted permission for the march, but warned that they would extinguish any flame carried by protesters. Shortly before demonstrators arrived near the Indian parliament where over a thousand protesters were gathered, police confiscated the torch, but marchers had six reserve torches and swiftly substituted another one. Jamyang Choephel, a member of the Tibet Solidarity Committee, said that protesters were under instructions to proceed without violence. As he mapped out the route with a stick in the dusty earth, giving directions to waiting campaigners, he said: “We want to tell the world that the torch can only be carried if you have peace and calm and humanity around you. The Chinese who are organizing the Olympic torch relay have no peace, they have no humanity.” Many Tibetans had traveled from across India to participate. Tenzin Lhadon, 32, a farmer from Mysore in southern India spent 2,000 rupees, or around $50, to travel three days by train from her village to join the demonstrations. She said it was important to be present at such a crucial moment in the history of the Tibetan protest movement. “We want to stop the Chinese torch,” she said. “We oppose the Olympics in China. Our people in Tibet are not free, they are being killed, denied all freedom. Our dream is to have an independent Tibet.”