The man who tried to immolate himself, 45-year-old Son Jong Hoon, had led an unsuccessful public campaign to save his brother from execution in the North, where he was accused of spying after the two met secretly in China. About an hour into the relay, Son poured gasoline on himself and tried to light himself on fire, but police stopped him.
At the start of the relay, a protester rushed toward the Olympic flame and tried to unfurl a banner calling for China to respect the rights of North Korean refugees. Dozens of police surrounding the torch quickly whisked him away. As it approached the city center, another North Korean defector also tried to impede the run and was arrested. . . .
Scuffles broke out near the park between a group of 500 Chinese supporters and about 50 demonstrators. The Chinese side threw stones and water bottles at the others as some 2,500 police tried to keep the two groups apart.
A rock hit a journalist in the head, but there were apparently no other injuries.
Sadly, this is not the first instance in which acts of violence have been perpetrated by Chinese supporters against Tibetan protesters. I have posted concerning reports of similar incidents in Sydney and Kuala Lumpur.
I live-blogged torch relays in Bangkok and Jakarta. CNN noted in story about the Seoul relay: "In other recent Asian legs of the relay, a large number of Chinese students have attended. In Bangkok, Thailand, students told CNN the Chinese Embassy there provided their transportation and gave them shirts to wear." This does not surprise me. Why did the Chinese Embassies not give their demonstrators instructions about how to behave. . . or did they?
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Update: Beth is live-blogging the relay from Seoul. She has posted some photos and writes:
...what a day it's been! I was (literally) in the middle of a clash today between hundreds and hundreds of Chinese people and a small group of anti-China protestors as the Olympic Torch made its way through Seoul.
Beth says she took an "amazing video" which she presently trying to edit.
Update #2: Julia protested (for Tibet) and live-blogging the Seoul relay. She has lots of photos and tells an interesting story; about what it was like for her and her friends to cope with the Chinese students. I thought this passage was hilarious:
To lighten the mood a little Rodney, myself and some others started to sing the Backstreet Boys song, "I Want It That Way". The funniest thing ever happened, once we started to sing the song the Chinese thought we were singing some chant in favor of Tibet, so they started their chants again. It was hysterical. Rodney and I kept singing after everyone else stopped including the Chinese because we knew all the words, so we had to finish the song and it was hysterical to see the Chinese students faces while we were singing.I couldn't stop laughing when I read that.
Update #3: More Seoul relay live-bloggers:
- Sakura, a Japanese blogger I presume, has great photos of the torch relay.
- A Swiss-German blogger, Swiss Kimchi, was live-blogging the event. Some photos, strives to maintain "Swiss neutrality" in terms of comments.
Hi, I found something interesting posted @ http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4eecdc1c01009ciz.html. Hope you can open up your noble heart and spare a minute to look at it.Never mind if you don't understand the article because it is written in Mandarin; But, DO look at the photos / pics pasted, it shows something refreshingly different from what we have beed fed with all these days. A picture does tell a thousand words, doesn't it ?....Yes, this happened in Colgate,USA.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteHi PC, thanks for the link.
ReplyDeleteThe photos refer to a demonstration on April 22 at Colgate University by members of a Tibetan religious sect who pray to a deity whom the Dalai Lama believes is not kind and beneficial.
The members of this sect are angry with the Dalai Lama for not supporting their sect. It's a religious controversy within the Tibetan Buddhist community.
I don't know enough about Tibetan Buddhism to draw any conclusions. But I will say that any prominent religious leader is bound to face controversies of one kind or another.
The Dalai Lama appears to have the overwhelming support of the Tibetan community, and has stood for election within the exile community, winning overwhelmingly.
"In Bangkok, Thailand, students told CNN the Chinese Embassy there provided their transportation and gave them shirts to wear."
ReplyDelete-- You guys WAY WAY overestimate the power of Chinese Embassy... If you know any Chinese, you can go to those Internet forums created by Chinese students. You will see how people donate money by themselves to support the torch relay. In fact in many situations, the embassy was trying to calm down the students and did not suggest them to go. CNN was irresponsibly spreading rumors, just non-stop. Shame on CNN, and shame on you for taking these rumors without even thinking. Use your brain!
Hi Jotman,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your enlightenment on the photos and glad to hear that you would agree to the fact that no matter how prominent a person or how great a country is, there bound to be controversies & shortcomings. Can i presume that you would also agree that all these controversies are best to be handle by engagement rather than the ways that we were made to see through the free press all these days ?
Hi Jotman,
ReplyDeleteWould also like to compliment on your frank acknowledgement of your insufficient knowledgement on Tibetan Buddhism to make a just conclusion. Sincerely hope that there are more people like you around, it will definitely make our World a better place to stay. However, if the free press would allow the same opportunity to this "dissident" sect, similar to what they have generously given to Dalai, won't it make things even better & fairer ? Because how and who are we to decide which is the more kind & beneficial one, right ? by words of one person ? then how about the voices of the other sides ? This is what Democracy supposed to be, right ?
Jotman wrote, "The Dalai Lama appears to have the overwhelming support of the Tibetan community, and has stood for election within the exile community, winning overwhelmingly."
ReplyDeleteAny Link to substantiate this unsubstantiate fact.
Janjan,
ReplyDelete"The Dalai Lama appears to have the overwhelming support of the Tibetan community, and has stood for election within the exile community, winning overwhelmingly."
Any Link to substantiate this unsubstantiate fact.
My source is Pico Iyer's The Open Road: the global journey of the 14th Dalai Lama. It's an interesting biography of the Dalai Lama by a good writer. (I wrote up a short review of the book in a previous post.)
Hi Jotman,
ReplyDeleteGlad to hear that you have written a short review on the book by Pico lyer.But you did say it is a biography, didn't you ?..As i have not had the opportunity to read the book, i am just wondering wether the book includes any opinion / point view from different {opposite to be exact} angles, or is it a description of Dalai's life purely from his own eyes as the name biography suggested. Hope,one day we would be able to read something about what the other sides {excludes the Chinese & the pro-tibet activist}think of Dalai in your blog
pc: As i have not had the opportunity to read the book, i am just wondering wether the book includes any opinion / point view from different {opposite to be exact} angles, or is it a description of Dalai's life purely from his own eyes as the name biography suggested.
ReplyDeleteThe author, a journalist, is a friend of the Dalai Lama. As you point out, such a biography has obvious disadvantages, but also has strengths.
CNN noted in story about the Seoul relay: "In other recent Asian legs of the relay, a large number of Chinese students have attended. In Bangkok, Thailand, students told CNN the Chinese Embassy there provided their transportation and gave them shirts to wear."
ReplyDelete-All you have to do is just to open your mouth and say anything you want. which student says so? evidence? So many students claim they go to the torch voluntarily and nobody listens or maybe those students are just employed by chinese government.
I am really really sick of this.
Don't ever blame the chinese government to teach their people (both domestic and overseas)to hate the western media, they earn it.