AUSTRALIA:More than 10,000 Chinese Australians staged the biggest pro-Beijing rally of the protest-marred Olympic torch relay yesterday, bringing a sea of red Chinese flags and drowning out Tibetan demonstrators.
Anti-Chinese protests during the previous relay legs have sparked a wave of patriotism among Chinese at home and abroad, and yesterday thousands of Chinese chanting "One China" packed the start and finish of the torch relay in the Australian capital. Police made seven arrests, but the event was mostly peaceful.
Chinese six-deep lined the 16km relay route and hundreds of cars drove around Canberra carrying Chinese flags.
"It was highly organised," Free-Tibet supporter and Australian Greens senator Bob Brown told Reuters. "Australians will feel a little bit uncomfortable by the fact that communist China came to town and just showed it can buy anything."
China denied the charge. "I don't know how this question is relevant," Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said in Beijing. "If someone is interested in it, then has he asked those people who disrupt and sabotage the torch if there are any organisers and instigators behind them? I think that question is more newsworthy."
Beijing has accused the Dalai Lama of being behind the riots in Tibet's capital, Lhasa, on March 14th and unrest which followed in other ethnic Tibetan areas as part of a bid for Tibetan independence and to ruin the Olympics.
On Saturday, the torch will be run through Nagano, Japan, where officials have changed the route due to security concerns and complaints from locals.
Unlike London, Paris or San Francisco, where torch-bearers were jostled by protesters as they ran, in Canberra a heavy police presence, steel barricades and the city's wide boulevards ensured runners were unobstructed.
Scuffles broke out between Tibetan protesters and China supporters, who included Chinese Australians and Chinese students, before the start of the relay and when Tibetan protesters tried to block the runners. Pro-Tibet protesters included Canadian singer KD Lang, a Buddhist, who interrupted her Australian tour to travel to Canberra. -