The lighting of the Beijing Olympic flame in Greece on Monday will trigger a new wave of protests against Chinese authorities over Tibet and other issues, according to activists.
As unrest in Tibet raged over the past several days, a nucleus of rights groups campaigning on diverse issues including Tibet came together to plan concerted action for maximum impact.
"We have been talking and we have been planning," said Lhadon Tethong, spokeswoman for Students for a Free Tibet, a group of activists leading protests against China's rule of the region. "The next phase is all about international accountability and action."
Officials from different activist groups have drawn up plans with the goal of galvanising opposition to China's record on Tibet, Darfur, human rights, religious freedom and other issues in the run-up to the August Beijing Games.
The options under consideration include an all-out Olympic boycott, a more targeted boycott of the opening ceremony alone or of Olympic sponsors, specific protests by activists or even by athletes themselves. "All of this is possible and even likely," said Tethong.
The immediate focus for the pro-Tibet groups and others is on the relay for the Olympic torch, which is scheduled to ascend Mount Everest later this spring and to visit Lhasa in mid-June.
The flame is to be lit at a 30-minute ritual in Greece on Monday in the presence of the head of the Beijing Olympic organising committee, Liu Qi, and International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Jacques Rogge. After a tour of Greece, the flame will travel to Beijing for an official send-off ceremony on March 31 for the torch relay on its journey across five continents.
It then returns to China in May for the domestic section of the relay, which includes every Chinese province and region, including Tibet. Pro-Tibet groups are determined to get the Tibet leg scrapped, particularly in the light of the recent bloodshed in the Himalayan region.
"We are not calling for athletes to stay away from the Olympics," said Anne Holmes, director of the London-based Free Tibet campaign. "But we do insist that the IOC intervene to prevent the torch relay going through Tibet.
Other groups have their own plans for action. The spiritual group Falungong, for example, is running its own torch relay to highlight the plight of its followers in China, who it says are subject to brutal persecution. Dream for Darfur, an organisation set up to pressure China into helping end the bloodshed in the western Sudanese region, is planning protests along the torch relay route. "We will be targeting the various stages of the torch relay," said Jill Savitt, the director of the group.