OLYMPIC FLAME IN NEW DELHI

OLYMPIC FLAME IN NEW DELHI

Torch Paraded through Quiet Streets

There was no Olympic torch chaos for New Delhi on Thursday -- the authorities made sure of that. Instead, the flame passed through eerily quiet streets, while the protests, and arrests, took place elsewhere.

The Olympic torch was paraded through quiet streets in New Delhi on Thursday, where authorities sealed off the city center to keep Tibetan protestors away from the flame on its short tour of the Indian capital.

PHOTO GALLERY : OLYMPIC TORCH LIGHTS EMPTY NEW DELHI STREETS

• 
• 
• 

Click on a picture to launch the image gallery (9 Photos)

Successive rings of security personnel -- the now familiar Chinese guards in their blue track suits at the center, with Indian security guards dressed in red surrounding them -- flanked the flame as it was carried from the presidential palace to the India Gate monument.

Much of New Delhi's, colonial-era center, which is home to Parliament and myriad government ministries, was closed to traffic and pedestrians by about 15,000 police. Several buses full of police followed the roughly 70 runners along the three-kilometer (two-mile) route without incident.

Streets were sealed for blocks around the route, which had been sharply cut back by worried organizers and officials, leaving the runners able to jog for just a few seconds before handing the flame to the next person.

DER SPIEGEL

The Olympic torch travels the world.

The public were allowed nowhere near the relay, and crowds amounted to just several hundred young people sitting on bleachers wearing T-shirts of Olympic sponsor Coca-Cola and several hundred members of India's Chinese community.

Indian authorities were desperate to avoid the chaos that plagued the torch's cameos in London and Paris in recent weeks, and police managed to control scattered protests in New Delhi and other cities. Some 180 pro-Tibetan protestors were detained across the country. India is home to some 100,000 Tibetans, the largest such exile community.

Some two dozen Tibetan exiles chanted anti-China slogans and protested along a busy highway in New Delhi as the torch arrived in a plane before dawn on Thursday and made its way into the city. Several were detained. In Mumbai, India's financial capital, police detained about 25 other Tibetans who attempted to breach the barricades around the Chinese Consulate. Protesters shouted "Free Tibet" as they were dragged into police vehicles.

NEWSLETTER

Sign up for Spiegel Online's daily newsletter and get the best of Der Spiegel's and Spiegel Online's international coverage in your In- Box everyday.

On Wednesday, Indian authorities arrested two dozen Tibetans when they tried to breach a line of security around the Chinese Embassy in New Delhi. Demonstrators painted the slogan "No Olympics in China" on the street not far away from the embassy.

The torch was scheduled to leave New Delhi later Thursday for Thailand.

pmm/ap/reuters