Chinese Protesters Torch French Flag Outside French-Run Supermarket
By VOA News
18 April 2008
Dozens of young Chinese protesters rallied outside a French-run
supermarket in northeastern China Friday, voicing anger over the
recent disruption of the Olympic torch relay in Paris.
The protesters shouted slogans and burned a French flag outside a
Carrefour store in Qingdao, Shandong province. Some held up a large
banner that read "Sup****t the Olympics, boycott France."
There have been several small protests of Carrefour in recent days,
but Friday's rally was the largest yet and comes as China is urging
its citizens to cool their anger over international protests of the
government's crackdown of anti-Chinese protests in Tibet.
Some Chinese Internet users began calling for a boycott of Carrefour
after pro-Tibet protesters disrupted last week's Beijing Olympic torch
relay in Paris.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has said he is considering not
attending the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics and has urged
China to sit down and hold talks with Tibet's exiled spiritual leader,
the Dalai Lama.
On Thursday, China's state-run Xinhua news agency issued an official
commentary calling on Chinese to channel their "patriotic zeal"
towards economic development.
The commentary appears to follow a previous pattern in which Beijing
allows its citizens to express angry sentiments towards outside
entities, then tries to rein them in before they spiral out of
control.
Angry students and citizens staged violent anti-U.S. protests in 1999
after the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade was mistakenly bombed by NATO
warplanes.
