Lone Russian protestor arrested at Olympic flame relay
SAINT PETERSBURG (AFP) — Russian police quickly pounced on a lone Russian demonstrator outside the Chinese consulate in St Petersburg on Saturday as the Olympic bandwagon rolled into town.
It was the sole incident as the Olympic flame was paraded through Russia's one-time imperial capital, the third stop on its way to the Beijing Games as part of a 19-country tour dogged by controversy over China's treatment of its Tibet region.
Alexander Gudimov, belonging to Russia's opposition reformist party Yabloko, tried to unfurl a banner reading "Stop Killing" in English in front of the Chinese mission, but dozens of police guarding the building arrested him and bundled him off.
Yabloko was the only party to announce a protest, after two other demonstrations in support of Tibet planned in Saint Petersburg ahead of the torch's arrival were cancelled at the behest of the authorities.
Protests in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, on March 10 to mark a failed 1959 uprising against Chinese rule escalated into widespread rioting in the city, which then spread to neighbouring Chinese provinces populated by Tibetans.
Russia has said that China's violent clamp-down is not an international diplomatic issue but rather an internal matter for the country to resolve and should not be "politicised."
Russia's 1952 shot-put gold medallist Galina Zybina was the first of 80 torch-bearers in a 20-kilometre (12-mile) relay from a Soviet World War II memorial in the south of Saint Petersburg to the Winter Palace in the centre of town.
Zybina, now 77, was herself a veteran of the 900-day World War Two siege of the city, then known as Leningrad, by German invaders.
Around 2,000 people waved Olympic and Russian flags under blue skies on Victory Square as the first torch was lit in an elaborate ceremony dedicated to 81 city residents who have won Olympic gold.
Flanked by soldiers in period uniforms and a military band, city governor Valentina Matviyenko said it was "deeply symbolic" that Zybina, 77, a survivor of the city's 1941-43 Nazi blockade, was starting the relay.
In the city for the first time since the 1980 Summer Games in Moscow, the flame was also carried by Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, and local soccer star Andrei Arshavin.
Matviyenko said that Saint Petersburg might be a candidate to host the Olympics in the year 2020.
Last July the Russian town of Sochi was chosen by the International Olympic Committee to organise the 2014 Winter Olympics.
"I don't know if we'll ever get the chance to see the Olympic flame again," said one bystander, teacher Galina Sergeyeva, who was watching the parade with her eight-year-old son in the city centre. "Some day he'll be able to say he was here."
The flame was scheduled to light a ceremonial Olympic goblet at the conclusion of the event on Palace Square.
After the flame was flown into the city, the administration kept its whereabouts secret, despite the lack of any obvious threat of disruption. China's neighbour Russia is one of Beijing's closest diplomatic allies.
Pro-Tibet activists and other groups were planning demonstrations at key locations on the flame's route, including London on Sunday, Paris on Monday and San Francisco on Wednesday.
