Nagano: Not Much to Blog About


The weird Olympics-Torch-Relay-Slash- Anti-China-Slash-Free-Tibet-Slash-Pro-China event is over in Nagano, with few arrests and not much to blog about. Except that the old guy caught on photo while being arrested by police hardly looks like the usual kind of pro-democracy campaigner here in Japan. My guess is that he is belongs to some of the fringe groups on the far right, who ride around in black trucks and blare out war-time marches. The flame's next stop is Seoul.

NHK World says representatives of Tibetans living in Japan held a news conference in Nagano, calling on China to immediately stop human rights abuses in Tibet:

The leader of the group Students for a Free Tibet Japan, Tsering Dorjee, said that when the Chinese government bid for the Olympics, it promised to improve its human rights record. But he said that since then, the situation for Tibetans has only continued to deteriorate. The Paris-based non-governmental organization, Reporters Without Borders, says it will stage a peaceful protest during the torch relay in Nagano. The advocacy group's secretary-general, Robert Menard, arrived in Japan on Friday, and said at a news conference in Tokyo that he will wear a badge bearing the Japanese word for freedom.

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