Officials Put Out Olympic Torch 3 Times

PARIS — Security officials extinguished the Olympic torch three times Monday as protests against China's human rights record turned a relay through Paris into a chaotic series of stops and starts.

Despite massive security, at least two activists got within almost an arm's length of the flame before they were grabbed by police. Officers tackled many protesters and carried off some of them. A protester threw water at the torch but failed to extinguish it and was also taken away.

At the start of the relay, a man identified as a Green Party activist was grabbed by security officers as he headed for 1997 400-meter world champion Stephane Diagana, the president of France's national athletics league, who was carrying the torch from the first floor of the Eiffel Tower. The man was tackled before he got close to Diagana.

Keep reading here.

Watch the turbulent protests in Paris:

Watch footage of earlier protests in London as the Olympic torch made its way through the UK:

Comments

[mouselion]

Looks like the torch relay was pretty close to being InSeine.

[HumeSkeptic]

Thank you Paris.

[argent1]

It is the enduring flame of the Tibetan people, their culture and spiritual prowess that cannot be extinguised.

[pakiman]

This is such typical Western hypocrisy. The US and NATO are murdering hundreds of thousands in Iraq and Afghanistan while supporting a slow genocide in Palestine. Meanwhile the leaders who perpetrate these crimes are elected and re-elected, and the Western stooges that have been fed propaganda about Tibet protest China's olympics. Where is the vitriol and protest against their own countries? How dare anyone in the West complain about China until they have fixed their own house first!

[gsuescum]

As far as I know the French are not in Iraq or supporting genocide in Palestine.

[TheSuaveOne]

Pakiman
Are you deaf and blind?If you were not, you would have noticed the number of times we filled the streets of London inprotest against those wars, so allow me to suggest that you are talking nonsense.Y­ou are right, there is western hypocracy in continuing to trade with a dictatorship that has no respect for human rights,no regard for human values and openly opressess its people.Now on the other hand, if China was in Africa...n­o one will give it time of day.Thats where the main hypocracy lies.

[MadeinAmericaProud]

Can you run for president of a nation?
Such an on point statement using very few words, but powerful. Maybe be a speech writer.

[MadeinAmericaProud]

We are waiting on our welfare check from this dictatorship, because we gave them our jobs.
We are blind and deaf. We are about to vote again against our own best interest. We just don't get it. I live in a snow globe, every now and than someone picks this dam* thing up and shake it. They put it down, that's it. We just don't have the desire to break the glass.

[HumeSkeptic]

Pakiman, your point is well taken. However, it is the Western governments, not so much the people who are murdering hundreds of thousand in Iraq and Afghanistan.

What Parisians did is admirable. And there have been numerous protests in the West against our own governments.

[JuniorBug]

Propaganda about Tibet? It seems not only do you appear to be confused about France's role in Iraq & Afghanistan, but you seem to be defending China as well.

[Bluedog12]

Do I detect superpower envy? Listen up there Confucius cause I know the polluted air may be affecting your mental capacity. Those Party bosses are going to want to know why your posting on this "western" blog. You've got a lot of explaining to do. Good luck with all that. Now go back to flogging your daughter.