news from ABC [ 八千里 ] 于:2008-04-23 19:32:14
Olympic swimming champion Ian Thorpe was the final torch runner, and he lit the Olympic cauldron in front of a huge crowd waving Chinese flags in Commonwealth Park.

Thorpe laughed as the flame in the cauldron sputtered and died before being relit.

There were several arrests and some minor scuffles between rival protesters along the route, but the scale of security and unrest was on a far lower scale than earlier international legs in London, Paris and San Francisco.

But requests to keep protests away from the War Memorial were ignored with about 100 Chinese supporters jumping the barricades in an attempt to intimidate Tibetan demonstrators.

Early in the running there was some confusion as to the role of Chinese flame attendants, who jostled with their Australian Federal Police (AFP) counterparts in attempts to get close to the torch runners.

The misunderstanding appeared to be sorted out though, as the AFP officers relented and allowed the blue-tracksuited attendants to run alongside the torch and oversee the transfer of the flame from runner to runner.

Early trouble

The relay got underway around 8:45am (AEST) with thousands of Chinese spectators and protesters and a few hundred pro-Tibetan protesters clashing in Reconciliation Place.

One man was detained when he set fire to a Chinese flag, and a group of pro-Tibetan protesters had to be forcibly removed when they ran into the midst of a large group of Chinese supporters.

But the progress of the torch was unimpeded in the hands of the first runner, 2007 Young Australian of the Year Tania Major, as it was when it made its way along the 16-kilometre route.

One protester got close but was dragged aside by AFP officers a few hundred metres from Parliament House after he threw himself on the ground ahead of a torchbearer.

Two pro-Tibet women charged the torch convoy as it neared Parliament House and were dragged away by police as one yelled: "They're torturing my country."

But the thousands of Chinese protesters vastly outnumbered the pro-Tibetans, with Chinese flags dominating Reconciliation Place and the route of the relay.

At one stage around 200 Chinese protesters surrounded a solitary pro-Tibetan activist, yelling "Liar, liar."

But they were largely peaceful, with demonstrators waving flags and spelling out 'OneChina' in red on a lawn alongside the relay route.

The Chinese protesters who jumped the fence at the War Memorial were eventually brought under control without disrupting proceedings and the oldest torch bearer, Julius Judy Patching, held the flame aloft at the foot of the Memorial.