Reporting by SFBG intern Emma Rae Lierley and SFBG reporter Sarah Phelan
Amid a backdrop of increased bloodshed in Tibet, and an early morning March 20 arson attack on the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco, Tibetan supporters gathered last Thursday outside City Hall for a candlelight vigil to protest San Francisco’s April 9 Olympic torch relay.
Inside City Hall, Mayor Gavin Newsom spoke to a semi-circle of news cameras, claiming that hosting the torch brings “pride” to many in the city, including San Francisco’s Chinese community, and stressing that the torch should be seen as a symbol of unity, both for the city and the world.
But during the Olympic Torch’s April 9 relay through San Francisco—its only North American touchdown as it travels from Greece to Beijing—the torch will be run along San Francisco’s waterfront, not through the narrow streets of the city’s Chinatown. And that Tibetan critics of China’s continuing human rights abuses would like to stamp out the torch’s relay through San Francisco entirely, claiming China has stained the flame’s original symbolism
“We, the Tibetans in San Francisco, see the torch as a tainted torch, a Chinese torch tainted in Tibetan blood,” said Tsering Gyurmey, an organizer of the March 20 vigil and an activist with SF TeamTibet, a collection of local organizations.
“The people of San Francisco don’t want the torch,” Gyurmey added. “It’s against the values of the city, against human rights and democracy. This torch comes from the communist Chinese government, where Tibetan people are being killed on their own land.”
A few hours earlier, Gyurmey was one of over a hundred speakers at a Board of Supervisors committee meeting, as Sups. Carmen Chu and Sean Elsbernd, Newsom’s closet allies on the Board, helped strike down a resolution, authored by Sup. Chris Daly, that took a critical stance of China and the Olympic torch.
Public comment lasted over two hours on the item, and was largely in favor of the resolution introduced by Supervisor Chris Daly. Calling for a solemn acceptance of the torch, the resolution asked for the city to receive it with “alarm and protest.”
Supervisor Daly also decried the city’s consideration of “free speech zones,” or special areas where anti-Chinese demonstrations would be limited to during the torch run.
“When our administration was asked to set up these zones, they should have said no,” Daly said during the meeting. “We can not be told to compromise our democracy as we ask others to expand theirs.”
Daly has pledged to try and reinsert his criticisms, when the resolution comes before the full Board on April 2, the week before the Olympic Torch relay is scheduled.
Meanwhile, China has lashed out at US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, calling her a “defender of arsonists, looters and killers” according to international news reports, after she visited the Dalai Lama and criticized Chinese oppression in Tibet.
“If freedom-loving people throughout the world do not speak out against China’s oppression in Tibet, we have lost our moral authority to speak on behalf of human rights anywhere in the world,” said Pelosi. who came out punching when evidence of China’s pre-Olympic crackdown on religious leaders, journalists and lawyers first emerged.
“The Olympic Games in Beijing this summer should provide an opportunity for more free expression, not less,” Pelosi said. MArch 12.
But now US Senator Dianne Feinstein is weighing in on the side of caution, telling the Board of Supervisors not to use the Olympic torch relay to condemn China, claiming that doing so, will make it harder to resolve the Tibet issue.
As for San Francisco’s plan to try to contain protesters in “free speech zones” – located at the start and end of the torch run – Feinstein reportedly doesn’t have a problem with it. That’s the way she handled demonstrations at Democratic National Convention in San Francisco back in 1984 when she was mayor.