Most Tibetans were kept far away from the site of the Olympic torch relay in Lhasa, June 21, 2008.
Guang Niu/Getty Images
A Chinese policeman stops photos from being taken during the ending ceremony for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games torch relay on June 21, 2008 in Lhasa, Tibet.
Geoffrey York reported for the Toronto Globe and Mail that the foreign journalists invited to witness the Lhasa torch relay saw only the beginning and the end of the run. The end of the 9 kilometer run was celebrated with Tibetan ethnic dancing for the carefully hand-picked audience.
York also reported that "Chinese officials took advantage of the Olympic event to launch another verbal blast at the Dalai Lama, whom they blame for the unrest in Tibet."
Zhang Qingli, head of the Tibetan Communist Party, used the occasion to deliver a promise to "smash the splittist schemes of the Dalai Lama clique." Shang Qingli's speech had to be translated from Chinese because he does not speak Tibetan.