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Comment: the shaming of London: part one
Evening Standard07.04.08
Today the Government and the Metropolitan Police are left to reflect on the shambles of the passage of the Olympic torch through London yesterday. The abiding images are of the phalanx of Chinese security men flanking the torchbearers, the extraordinary efforts of the demonstrators to disrupt the route and the heavy-handed tactics of the police in preventing them from doing so.
Today's squabble between the Met and the Beijing Olympic Organising Committee, Bocog, about who is to blame is ludicrous. But the International Olympic Committee is at least in part to blame. London's police, rather than anonymous Chinese regime guards, should have been unambiguously in charge. The Met had almost a year to prepare for yesterday's event. It is baffling that it seemed wholly unable to take into account the strength of feeling against Chinese repression in Tibet. Activists made it perfectly clear in advance that they intended to protest and the police should have acted accordingly. The Met should remember too that, unlike in China, it is not a crime to wear T-shirts telling the regime to stop the killing - which in at least one case they seem to have forgotten.
Ministers and police must share the blame for this debacle - but so too must the IOC. When it awarded the Games to China it extracted a number of commitments from the Chinese government over human rights. It has done nothing like enough to make clear that, particularly in respect of Tibet, these commitments have not been honoured. For the future, the IOC is considering limiting the progress of the Olympic torch primarily to the country hosting the Games; that seems a sensible step. For now, it should insist that the progress of the torch does not include Tibet in its itinerary.
