Chinese guards will run own race Font Size: Decrease Increase Print Page: Print Samantha Maiden Blog | April 16, 2008 | 65 Comments
AUSTRALIAN officials who believe the Chinese “flame attendants” can run next to the Olympic flame without getting involved in security could be in for a surprise. That’s what police in London, San Francisco and Paris thought.
But the fact remains local authorities face an impossible task. It is after all Beijing’s torch relay, not Australia’s. As a result, China remains responsible for most of the operational decisions apart from security.
It is for that reason that Kevin Rudd’s pledge that the blue-tracksuited Chinese flame attendants will remain locked on the bus as the torch makes its way through the streets of Canberra, remains a diplomatic minefield.
Today we learn - despite repeated suggestions the flame attendants would be held off-Broadway when the flame arrives here - that at least three Chinese officials will run with the flame, on and off as it makes its way around the nation’s capital.
It’s not quite what Mr Rudd indicated in China earlier this month when he said: “If there are representatives from the Beijing Olympic Committee attending the torch when it is in Australia, my understanding from the Australian authorities is that they would be travelling in an accompanying bus.’’ It was a claim that prompted a front-page headline in The Sydney Morning Herald: No foreign torch guards in Canberra.
But today, Attorney-General Robert McClelland confirmed that wasn’t entirely accurate.
“The only role that they - the Chinese officials - will play will be to light the torch should it be extinguished and that will be the sole role that they will play in these events,” Mr McClelland confirmed.
Clearly, the ACT police and the Rudd Government remain adamant they will not be involved in security.
Problem solved? Not quite, if events overseas are any guide. In San Francisco, for example, officials were told the attendants were needed to carry the keys to turn the torches on and off as the flame was passed from runner to runner.
And yes, that’s exactly what ACT police said today the three Chinese officials would be doing here.
“After setting clear ground rules about what they would and wouldn’t do, we decided we would live with it,” police chief Heather Fong later told the San Francisco Chronicle.
But after the London torch run also was plagued by protesters, Fong called her counterparts in Britain for advice on how things had worked there and was alarmed at what she heard.
“According to London police, the Chinese attendants did not appear to speak English, so it was impossible for the cops to talk to them,’’ the newspaper reported.
“Instead, the attendants, who all wore earpieces, took their orders from Zhang Ming, a Chinese Olympic official who accompanied the run in a car. She would order changes in the speed of the relay or bring it to a halt, even when London police wanted to move.’’
In London, television presenter Konnie Huq, who carried the torch for part of the route through London, said of the Chinese guards: “They were very robotic, full-on and I noticed them having skirmishes with our own police and the Olympic authorities. They were barking orders like ‘run’ and ‘stop’ and I was like: ‘Who are these people?’”
But it was Sebastian Coe, the former MP, Olympic medallist and chairman of the 2012 London Olympic Committee, who was overheard by Channel 4 News criticising the Chinese officials to his assistant as “thugs”.
“They tried to push me out of the way three times. They are horrible. They did not speak English . . . I think they were thugs,” he said.
If the organisers should do “one thing in Paris, it is to get rid of those guys’’, Lord Coe said.
But as Australia is about to discover, that is easier said than done.
