36 people arrested so far during the Olympic torch relay in London. I took part in the demo outside Whitehall and a number of protesters broke through just before the change over outside 10 Downing Street and those that took part in breaking thought were brought to the ground and arrested. Which lead to an eventual a stand off between the Pro Tibet and Chinese supporters, the police were forced to use police horses to part the two apart from each other. The blame really lay towards the Chinese supports intermingling with the pro-Tibet supports so no surprisingly things started to get ugly. Later I tried to catch up with the protest in the St Pauls area and just got the tail end of it so as being a pro in these demo I followed the Police/T.V. Helicopters in the sky. I managed to catch up with them in the East Aldgate area and things started to pick up a bit with a amusing sight of army of riot police (minus helmet) running along side the torch with the "bike police" (you can tell with the fact that they were wearing Cycle helmets) forming the inner cordon. You couldn't see the torch to well in the bodies of back and yellow jacketed bobbies. This sight developed in a running stand off between pro Tibet supports and Police/Chinese supporters from East Aldgate to Stratford . Hell it was a run, it was a amusing seeing the police getting a bit of a work out and a number of people threw themselves in front of the runners and "the bus stage". I think the police order the runner onto the bus and fled from the pro tibet supports who were force to run or catch a bus. I took the bus to Stratford. It appears the the "run" around Stratford was "cancelled" or I may had missed the tail end of it. Having spoken to a number of people they said that they hadn't seen it. Then I caught the train home know that they are heading towards the isle of dog. I suspect that the arrest number will rise . The Protest is now in the hands of Paris and so on we had done our bit and I hope they, the rest of the world will do theirs.
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Put the Torch Out!
06.04.2008 22:37
How can I get this kind of obvious point across to activists in Paris & beyond?
Ru