The Olympic torch has never had it so bad.
From Paris to London and in our very own San Francisco, it has evoked a little love but mostly a lot of protests, so much so that the torch had to be extinguished at one point in Paris and put into a bus to keep away hordes of protesters who were trying to put it out.
And to add fuel to the fire, prominent Western leaders, including U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Sen. John McCain, have threatened to stay away from the opening and closing ceremony of the Olympics if China doesn't stop oppressing the Tibetan people.
Let's face it - the Olympics have often been used to make political statements. When Moscow hosted the Olympics in 1980, President Jimmy Carter led an international campaign in which 62 nations agreed to boycott the games. The U.S.S.R. returned the favor by staying away from the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics along with 12 of its allies.
So what is prompting the protests this time?
While fully supporting the Tibetan aspiration for autonomy, we have to admit it's strange when the world turns its back on the numerous struggles for national self-determination and autonomy but chooses to selectively embrace the Tibetan struggle.
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Two reasons could explain the behavior of the West, the first being that the West has woken up to the importance of human rights. This, we know, is false because the Basque separatist movement, the Palestinian struggle for self-determination and the Kurdish movement for a separate homeland have rarely received this kind of support from the West.
The second reason - that Tibet is a good stick to beat China with - is probably more plausible. China is the only non-Western country with a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council and is emerging as a world superpower, much to the chagrin of the West.
It has also maintained a two-digit annual growth rate at a time when Western economies are slowing down, is investing heavily in energy self-sufficiency and is upgrading its weapons at an alarming rate.
Moreover, it is a major creditor to the U.S., as it buys U.S. treasury bonds and underwrites the war in Iraq.
The steady march of an Asian country - a communist one at that - into the ranks of the Western nations has been a constant source of irritation, and the protests in the West against China are an indication of this phenomenon.
That does not mean that there aren't well-meaning activists espousing the cause of Tibet. Some of them have consistently stood up for human rights of the oppressed, be it those of Tibetans or of any colonized people of the world.
But since when did leaders become so concerned about human rights?
