SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) — Internationally renowned figures including Hollywood icon Richard Gere and Archbishop Desmond Tutu gathered in San Francisco Tuesday as the city geared up for its leg of the Beijing Olympic torch relay.
A myriad of rights groups and activists have descended on this famously liberal California city for Wednesday's event, after anti-China protests marred previous legs of the flame's global odyssey earlier this week.
"This really is an epic moment," Gere, chairman of the International Campaign for Tibet, told a candlelight vigil attended by some 2,000 people in downtown San Francisco late Tuesday.
"The harmonious society (Chinese president) Hu Jintao talks about is a fraud. There can be no harmony without freedom of religion and culture."
Gere shared with demonstrators a letter from the Dalai Lama urging nonviolence. In it, the Tibetan spiritual leader said it was "futile and not helpful to create hate in the hearts of Chinese people."
"I have a dream that Chinese leaders wake up one day, blink their eyes as if coming out of a daze and say 'Oh my god, what have we done?', then look at each other at the same time and say, 'let's go talk to the Dalai Lama,'" Gere said.
Tutu lauded the protestors for outpourings of support for human rights and called on US President George W. Bush and the leaders of other nations not to go to Beijing for the Games.
"For God's sake, for the sake of our children, for the sake of their children, for the sake of the beautiful people of Tibet -- don't go," Tutu said in his message to heads of states.
"Tell your counterparts in Beijing you wanted to come but looked at your schedule and realized you have something else to do."
The vigil concluded a day of largely peaceful demonstrations that started with a rally at the city's United Nations Plaza and later saw some 800 protestors marching to the Chinese consulate.
An earlier report that Irish rock star Bono attended one of the protests and spoke to AFP was wrong, as the singer was not in the city, a spokesman said.
Around 7,000 protesters are expected to turn out as the torch makes its way through the city Wednesday under an unprecedented security blanket designed to prevent a repeat of the chaotic scenes in Paris on Monday, when the torch flames were snuffed out several times before the event was cut short.
Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved. More »
