A FLAMIN’ NUISANCE

Well, the Chinese goon squad in their baby blue tracksuits tried to hijack the Olympic Torch relay in Canberra but they didn’t succeed. Even a cynic would have to give these brain-washed martial arts experts a medal for trying.

And a squad of jogging Federal Police officers needed to use a bit of muscle to herd them away from the torch bearers even though the Chinese had been repeatedly warned that they had no rights to act as security guards in this country.

For a while there it looked like a game of chess in tracksuits and sneakers. Without putting one runner into a headlock an AFP guard managed to edge him away from the torch bearer – but seconds later there he was again jogging alongside the carrier.

You can’t blame the Chinese ‘flame attendants’ for their dogged  insistence. They were only following orders.

Only yesterday, at a muscle-flexing press conference a Beijing spokesman, Qu Ying-pu said the attendants would take matters into their  own hands if a torchbearer was threatened.

He said they would ‘use their bodies to form a kind of defence for the torchbearer’. That echoed the Chinese Ambassador Zhang Junsai who said earlier in the week that the guards could ‘use their bodies’ to protect the flame.

As I said last week when Kevan Gosper blundered into the debate:
Many of these goons trained by bashing monks in Tibet  and if any tried to play copper  they should be arrested.

Gosper had said ‘the security people from China – they call themselves torch protectors –will be there. But they’ll be in a bus behind the event and will only be called upon if there was really serious trouble’.

That’s what happened in London with the black-belted and black gloved  Chinese riot squad usurping the role of British Police during the torch’s troubled run. Even the head of the 2012 London Olympics.  Lord (former Olympian Sebastian) Sebastian Coe, got  pushed out of the way by them.

In Canberra the AFP finally got it right.  The edged the tracksuit brigade out of camera range and gave the carriers a clear run. They permitted them to move in and check on the torch at each handover but then moved them away again.

When, on a couple of occasions, a Free Tibet protester broke through the lines and got on to the roadway they were scooped up and taken out of action very quickly.

And once again Prime Minister Rudd made sure he had something else on. Like when he decided not to go to John Button’s funeral or welcome home troops from Afghanistan.

He’s getting good at that.

Thursday, April 24, 2008

© Copyright Derryn Hinch 2008