上周三（四月九号）奥运火炬在旧金山传递的时候英美电视新闻频道将近六个小时的转播没算白看。

Yay, didn’t watch almost six hours of the UK ad US news coverage of the Olympic Torch Relay in San Francisco for nothing 😉

Olympics bring out activism in students

By: Anita Rao, Staff Writer

Issue date: 4/14/08 Section: State & National

  • Page 1 of 1

Letian Lin, who thinks the Dalai Lama is trying to separate China by mixing politics with the Olympics, shows support for the games Friday in the Pit.

Media Credit: Jennifer Zeng
Letian
Lin, who thinks the Dalai Lama is trying to separate China by mixing
politics with the Olympics, shows support for the games Friday in the
Pit.

UNC
students gathered in the Pit on Friday to collect signatures supporting
the 2008 Beijing Olympics and opposing recent protests of the games.

Members
of the Friendship Association of Chinese Students and Scholars plan to
send the cream-colored cloth with the signatures to the organizing
committee to show support for the August games.

Recent protests
of the Olympic torch relay, a symbolic journey around the world, have
targeted China’s perceived human rights violations in Sudan and Tibet.

"We
don’t need to mix Olympics and politics," said Wei Luo, a UNC chemistry
graduate student and president of the association. "The Olympic Games
are the world’s dream and the world’s game."

Journalism graduate
student ### said she watched coverage of the torch relay and
thought the media gave an unfair amount of attention to the protesters.

"Many
Chinese people are hurt by the media’s portrayal of the situation," Lu
said. "The spirit here today is to show the Olympic spirit, not use the
Olympics as an excuse to hijack the governments."

But Duke
University junior Adam Weiss, a member of the Duke Undergraduate Human
Rights Coalition, said the Olympics are inherently political and
therefore valid grounds for protest.

Weiss organized a pro-Tibet
demonstration on his campus Wednesday, gathering a group of students
for a cross-campus run holding Tibetan flags.

The demonstration faced a group of 60 to 80 counter-protesters carrying Chinese flags and blocking the view of the runners.

"I
wanted to take the idea of celebrating these Olympics through a torch
relay and do the reverse," he said. "Instead of celebrating the Chinese
government, I said, ‘Let’s celebrate the Tibetan people who are often
neglected and forgotten.’"

Weiss said that while he was glad to see the activism, he supports boycotting the opening ceremonies.

UNC
geography professor Christopher Gaffney, who is teaching a course next
fall titled "Globalization and Sport," said the opening ceremony is a
good time to bring up political issues.

"It is an international exhibition," he said.

In
response to China’s violations, world leaders such as the president of
France have said they will not attend the opening ceremony.

UNC
journalism professor Charles Tuggle, who will lead a group of
journalism students to Beijing this summer to report for the Beijing
Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games, said he thinks the end
result of the Olympic protests will be good.

"The Chinese know
what they are doing and want to show themselves as a major world
player, so they knew that some major criticism was going to come along
with it," Tuggle said.

Contact the State & National Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.

Page 1 of 1