Paris Protests Disrupt Torch Relay

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Protests Follow Olympic Torch Through Europe

Olympic torch procession through London is marred by protests, which continued as the torch made its way through Paris. In Paris, the torch had to be extinguished because of all the protests.

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Two hours later, as the wheelchair-using table tennis player Emeric Martin rolled by the Trocadero plaza holding the unlighted torch aloft, he and two colleagues were pelted with plastic juice bottles, fruits and other projectiles by pro-Tibet demonstrators.

"Normally, this is supposed to be a celebration -- the torch is a symbol of peace," Martin said just after one of his companions was hit in the face with an object and they retreated to a bus. "This was not very pleasant."

Near the Louvre Museum, a torchbearer was forced inside the bus again when a protester approached with a fire extinguisher. Chinese officials ordered the torch into the bus and demanded that it bypass Paris's City Hall after local officials hung a banner outside declaring: "Paris defends human rights everywhere in the world."

Later, with the relay dragging hours behind schedule because of the confrontations, Olympic organizers in Paris and at the Chinese Embassy halted the procession 3 1/2 miles from its end and carried the torch inside a bus for the remainder of the route.

"Even with the unbelievable number of police on the route, the organizers didn't manage to protect the flame," said Benoit Hervieu, a spokesman for the press freedom advocacy group Reporters Without Borders, which managed to drape its banners depicting the Olympic rings as handcuffs on the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame Cathedral. "It will have a disastrous effect on China and the Olympic Committee. Today was clearly a nightmare for them."

"This event shows that sports and politics now go hand in hand," said Jacques Gasnier, a 61-year-old municipal employee who watched the protests in front of the ornate City Hall. "It is easier to demonstrate today than boycott Chinese products or ban Chinese boats from entering our harbors."

Chinese television showed no footage of Monday's events, which were covered extensively by international TV networks and Web sites.

The protests were an escalation of demonstrations that disrupted the torch relay Sunday in London. Police there tackled protesters to the ground when activists tried to grab the flame. Thirty-seven people were arrested.

David Wallechinsky, an Olympic historian and author, called Monday's protests "unprecedented" in their scope and organization, noting that other torch processions had been disrupted only "by the occasional odd person who jumps out."

The International Olympic Committee allowed the problem to spiral by failing to put pressure on China after awarding the Games in 2001, Wallechinsky said. "The IOC waited too long," he charged. "They should have dealt with the Chinese Communist Party earlier."

In France, Olympic athletes have proposed wearing a badge in Beijing emblazoned with the Olympic rings below the words "France" and "For a better world" to demonstrate their concern over China's human rights record. French pole vaulter Romain Mesnil, a leader of the campaign, said it was aimed at "putting the Olympic values back into the heart" of the Games.

The growing protests underscore the deep divide between many national governments -- which are developing extensive trade ties with China and are reluctant to offend an emerging economic power -- and their citizens, who often take a harder line on abuses. Recent surveys show that more than half the people in France, Switzerland and Denmark want their countries to boycott the opening ceremony in Beijing on Aug. 8.