NEW DELHI, India — Tens of thousands of pro-Tibetan demonstrators gathered across India on Thursday to protest the Olympic torch relay, facing off with a massive show of security mobilized to ensure the flame’s “harmonious journey” to Beijing could proceed.
A 70-person relay team of Indian athletes and celebrities carried the torch on a truncated, 2-mile run through the city’s colonial-era government center — a part of town that had been closed to traffic and emptied of people to protect the flame’s symbolic journey toward the start of the Olympic Games in August.
Hundreds, including at least 150 Tibetans, were arrested or detained in at least four different cities, including a group held by police in New Delhi after storming the hotel where the torch was housed. Another 30 were hustled away by police from in front of the Chinese consulate in Mumbai. Along with demonstrations in New Delhi and Mumbai, an estimated 30,000 had gathered in Bangalore and thousands more in the Hindu spiritual capital of Varanasi to protest China’s human-rights record and its treatment of Tibet.
India is home to the world’s largest community of exiled Tibetans, and the arrival of the torch here — after chaotic tours through London, Paris and San Francisco — was expected to draw large crowds.
Some 15,000 police were mobilized in New Delhi, lining the capital boulevard and clearing thousands from nearby parks in advance of the relay.
The members of a special Chinese torch protection squad, decked out in blue tracksuits, were also along to secure the relay route.
After demonstrators broke through the security cordon at the New Delhi hotel and were arrested, the torch relay was able to get underway. Given the shortened route, the dozens of relay runners were able to hold the torch for only a few seconds each as it proceeded between Rajpath and India Gate — a route that took less than an hour to complete.
At the end point, about 25 Chinese nationals welcomed the last runner by waving China’s flag. Indian flags were painted on their cheeks. After the brief relay, the torch was bundled off to its next stop, Australia.
