EVEREST
BASE CAMP (CHINA): A Tibetan woman took the Olympic torch the last steps to the
top of Everest on Thursday, realising “a dream of all Chinese
people”, but rights groups criticised Beijing for politicising the Games.
“Long live Tibet!”
and “Long live Beijing!”, the climbers, all wearing red, shouted
joyously into a TV camera after unfurling the Chinese national flag, the Olympic
flag and a flag bearing the Beijing Olympic
logo.
The ambitious project to
take the torch to the Himalayan peak was cast as the highlight of the relay
ahead of the Games, which start in three months’ time, and followed weeks
of protests against Beijing’s rule in Tibet. “We have realised a
promise to the world and a dream of all the Chinese people,” base camp
commander Li Zhixin told reporters after being mobbed by jubilant friends and
colleagues.
Communist China has
spent billions of dollars on staging the Olympics, eager to project the image of
a modern and vibrant country. But protests during the international leg of the
torch relay have bruised Chinese pride and provoked a surge of nationalist
sentiment. Overseas pro-Tibet groups condemned China for taking the torch to the
world's highest
peak.
“Beijing’s
conquest of Everest is a political move meant to reassert China’s control
of Tibet,” Tenzin Dorjee, deputy director of Students for a Free Tibet,
said in a statement e-mailed from New York. The Free Tibet Campaign said on its
website the project was “a callous attempt (by China) to legitimise its
baseless claims to sovereignty over
Tibet”.
Anti-Chinese
protesters caused serious disruption to some legs of the main torch
relay.