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The anti relayOlympic torchbearers will have company
Stewart Bell, National Post Published: Saturday, October 17, 2009
When the Olympic Torch Relay begins in Victoria this month, Marla Renn intends to be there. She won't be carrying the flame, she'll be protesting it.
"We're definitely going to be there, just like a whole lot of other groups," said Ms. Renn, a teacher and activist, and a member of the Vancouver-based Olympic Resistance Network.
The Olympic flame starts its journey in Greece on Thursday, then hops the Atlantic to British Columbia's seaside capital, the starting point of its trek across Canada and back again.
For 106 days, 12,000 torchbearers will haul the flame through 1,000 communities before arriving at B.C. Place stadium for the Feb. 12 opening ceremonies of the 2010 Winter Games.
At least, that's the plan. While Olympic organizers have been mapping out a 45,000-kilometre relay to "touch the soul of the nation and inspire the world," anti-Olympic activists have been making plans of their own.
An Anti-Olympic Festival is scheduled for Victoria on Oct. 30, the start of the torch relay. "Extinguish the Olympic Torch!" read an Olympic Resistance Network bulletin posted online this week that called on protesters to "oppose and resist" the relay. Activists have already targeted the relay's main corporate sponsor, RBC. Vandals smashed windows at RBC offices in Vancouver, Victoria and Ottawa. Their claims of responsibility called the Olympics "genocide and ecocide" and protested hosting the Games on "stolen" native land.
Last year's summer Olympics may offer a hint of what's ahead. In the buildup to the Beijing Games, China held a 21-country torch relay that was the longest in Olympic history -- and an easy target. Demonstrators protesting China's human rights record and crackdown in Tibet tried to steal the Olympic torch, extinguish the flame and block the relay route, forcing Beijing to cancel several legs of the "Journey of Harmony."
The relay for the Vancouver-Whistler games is also ambitious. It will be the longest ever in a host country. The serpentine route will bring the torch within a one-hour drive of 90% of Canada's population.
"We believe that the vast majority of Canadians are excited about the Olympic Games and the Olympic torch relay and we look forward to celebrating with them every step of the way," said Jackie Braden, a spokeswoman for RBC, which is sponsoring the relay.
But there is another view of the relay. "It's a perfect political event which is going to get world media attention, so the temptation to disrupt this thing or to protest it is very high," said Ottawa security consultant Tom Quiggin, who authored a paper on anti-Olympic extremism.
The anti-Olympic movement is a mix of aboriginal rights activists, environmentalists, anarchists and anti-poverty, anticapitalist, anti-globalization and anti-war groups.
"There's a whole whack load of different sectors of society that are represented within the network," Ms. Renn said. "But basically we're all coming together with the basic idea that there's some major concerns that the Olympics bring up."