Argyle Square Gardens is a relatively small park just south of Kings Cross, and I arrived just as the Tibetan Freedom Torch Relay was starting, to find it absolutely jam-packed, and it was a rather difficult job to make my way to the stage at the centre where there was a space for the press to work.
This too was pretty packed, and it wasn’t always possible to find a position from which one could photograph those appearing on stage adequately. Working in confined spaces is made considerably harder by the increasing trend of photographers to use backpacks rather than shoulder bags. There were also too many inexperienced photographers moving in front of others taking pictures without thinking about it. It’s something we all do occasionally by accident, but when working with others most try to avoid as much as possible. The worst offenders are people with camera phones or similar who think nothing about holding them out at arms length in front of other’s lenses.
There were stirring speeches and some fine performances on stage, but mostly the interest there was for the ear rather than the eye, and it was the members of the audience that attracted the photographers’ attention. The exception came at the end of the event with a short drama depicting the treatment of Tibetans by the Chinese and the Tibetan response, followed by the introduction to the Tibetan Freedom Torch and Team Tibet.
Athletes of Tibetan origin living around the world want to compete for Tibet in the Olympic Games and formed a national Olympic committee and mad an application to the International Olympic Committee to compete in Beijing. They received no response to this and last month withdrew their application, demanding the IOC remove all Olympic Torch relay stops in Tibet, including those in the Tibetan areas now a part of Chinese provinces.
Id stood on the pavement where the press were cleared to by police in Bloomsbury thinking that the Olympic slogan – Light the Passion, Share the Dream – really needed a third statement to seem complete, and Free Tibet made the obvious one. That supplied by the Tibetan Freedom Torch organisation, Freedom and Justice for Tibet is just too long to chant.
Team Tibet also appealed to athletes around the world to show solidarity with them by visible actions to protest about human rights abuses by China, and have started their own alternative Olympic torch relay. This began in Olympia, Greece on March 10th, the 49th anniversary of the Tibetan Uprising and has travelled across Europe, with ceremonies in Budapest, Rome, Munich and Edinburgh and London.
I photographed the torch as it was carried by one of the Drapchi nuns, imprisoned and tortured by the Chinese, on its route to St Pancras Station for the train to Paris – – like the other Olympic torch was going on to Paris. From there it will travel through North and South America and Asia, with its arrival in Tibet planned for the first day of the Beijing Olympics.
Text and more pictures on My London Diary