Don't Fear Olympic Protests
Don't fear Olympic torch protests
http://www.vancouversun.com/sports/fear+Olympic+torch+protests/1961460/s...
By Miro Cernetig, Vancouver Sun, September 4, 2009
A modern Olympics is as tightly controlled, as scripted, as pre-designed and sanitized as a royal tour going through Disneyland. Olympic Games officials welcome the unpredictable only on the field of competition.
But there is one moment when even the Olympic image makers who so carefully guard their multibillion-dollar brand start to get nervous -- the torch run.
Tradition dictates the "sacred flame," as it is called, must be relayed through a host country by designated torch runners, who then trot through crowds. This is a moment when the Olympic security bubble does not prevail.
During every torch run, Olympic organizers have the same fear. Will the "sacred flame" be obstructed, will the event be used by protesters to make political points? Could someone snuff out the torch, or even hijack it?
Vancouver's Olympic organizing committee is now feeling that angst. With the start of the 45,000-kilometre torch relay set for Oct. 22, there are rumblings some of Canada's aboriginals will use the moment to stage protests to grab international attention.
In Ontario, young people from the Iroquois Six Nations recently questioned their leaders about why they were allowing the torch to be run through their territory when the Games are on stolen, native land. A website, No Vancouver 2010 Olympics On Stolen Native Land (www.no2010 .com), is trying to drum up support for protests. And key aboriginal leaders haven't exactly been throwing water on the hotheads.
Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, says a task force is exploring "assertive strategies on the ground." Squamish First Nation Chief Bill Williams, representing one of the four "host first nations" of the Olympics, is on the record saying, "There will be some level of protest and I hope so, too."
Even Phil Fontaine, the recently retired Grand Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, sympathizes with protesters who see the torch as fair game.
"What that speaks to is the desperate situation in our communities," he said in 2008, when pro-Tibet protesters were trying to disrupt the Beijing Olympics torch run. "The Tibetans are disenfranchised people. . . [Canadians] should be just as outraged, if not more so . . . with what is being done to first nations here."
So, should the Games organizers get their Olympic rings in a knot over this turning into a public relations nightmare? Are we on the verge of an international shaming at the hands of Canadian aboriginals?
Don't count on it.
First of all, most natives seem ambivalent about the torch relay. And that's no surprise, since their leaders themselves send out what you could call (if you're being generous) mixed messages.
Consider Chief Fontaine. For all his talk about why the Olympic torch run is a legitimate target, he's into the Olympics whole-hog. In fact, he just joined the Royal Bank of Canada as a special adviser on aboriginal affairs. That's the very same bank that is a major sponsor of the Olympic torch run.
History also shows torch protests mostly fizzle.
In San Francisco, when the pro-Tibet protesters came out by the thousands to disrupt the ceremony, the cops and Olympic officials simply changed the route. They ran down a near-empty boulevard, helping Beijing's Olympic organizers save face.
Australia had its own threats of aboriginal protests in 2000, too, during the Sydney Games. Instead of an uprising, though, famous aboriginals from Down Under actually served as torch bearers, pretty much squelching any uprising.
It's actually a pity, really. Olympic organizers should embrace protests. They are one of the best unintended byproducts of a Games.
After all, it's protest -- and the threat of embarrassment -- that shamed South Korea into democracy in the run-up to its 1988 Summer Games. Australia apologized for its abysmal treatment of aboriginals. China's human rights record was put under a microscope in 2008. And Canada, in an attempt to stave off international embarrassment in 2010, has weaved first nations into the Vancouver Winter Games.
The Olympic flame has become a symbol for what's best in sport and a brand for a massive sports marketing machine, a.k.a. the International Olympic Committee.
But when the torch is relit in Olympia, Greece, on Oct. 22 to start the torch relay, it's worth remembering something else. That "sacred flame" also symbolizes an even more potent export from Greece -- democracy, and all the pesky protesters that come with it.