Fortress for a day

There is something remarkable about the way governments around the world are coordinating security arrangements for the Olympic torch. Nonetheless, protests in London and Paris this month appear to have alarmed the International Olympic Committee enough to meet this week to discuss abandoning the torch relay altogether. China, for its part, is pulling in its formidable diplomatic leverage to ensure that the relay route remains sanitised of protesters. With the India stretch scheduled for April 17, Delhi’s Rajpath is already strewn with rolls of barbed wire.

Is it any wonder then that anybody with half a grudge against China and a hope of being heard is rushing as near the torch relay as she can? The relay’s extension was China’s idea. And till just weeks ago, it seemed an inviolable part of the grand narrative China has built into the hosting of the Games. The Beijing Games were to be the country’s big coming-out party. 20 years after Deng set it off on its “peaceful rise”, China has used its economic growth and carefully modulated diplomacy to assert itself through participation in global institutions. The Games were to show the world that it had arrived. Beijing has been spruced up, its skyline made over with the most creative and ambitious architecture of the 21st century. Projections indicate that the Chinese contingent could flaunt the biggest medal haul by any country. As a way of setting it all up, the extended torch run was understandably seen as a good idea.

Beijing’s intolerance of protests — and it bears repetition that so far they have been peaceful — is therefore surprising. This is especially so since these protests are part of international events now — whether it be an IMF meet, or the UN General Assembly session. The protests go on, the scheduled function continues, and that’s it. The protesters also get tired and move on, as they have tended to with the World Economic Forum in recent years. By putting its touchiness on display, could it be that China is inviting protests? The Chinese regime has put itself beyond tolerance of any questioning, but what about the cities that host the torch on its relay run? Must they turn themselves into fortresses?