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SAINT PETERSBURG : The Olympic flame was paraded across Russia's imperial capital Saint Petersburg on Saturday as demonstrators prepared to protest over rights abuses by China, the host of this summer's Games.
Russia's 1952 shot-put gold medallist Galina Zybina was the first of 80 torch-bearers in a 20-kilometre (12-mile) relay from a Soviet World War II memorial in the south of the city to the tsarist Winter Palace in the centre.
Around 2,000 people waved Olympic and Russian flags under blue skies on Victory Square as the first torch was lit in an elaborate ceremony dedicated to 81 city residents who have won Olympic gold.
Flanked by soldiers in period uniforms and a military band, city governor Valentina Matviyenko said it was "deeply symbolic" that Zybina, 77, a survivor of the city's 1941-43 Nazi blockade, was starting the relay.
In the city for the first time since the 1980 Summer Games in Moscow, the flame was also carried by Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, and local soccer star Andrei Arshavin.
"I don't know if we'll ever get the chance to see the Olympic flame again," said teacher Galina Sergeyeva, who was watching the parade with her eight-year-old son in the city centre. "Some day he'll be able to say he was here."
The flame was to light a ceremonial Olympic goblet at the conclusion of the event on Palace Square, part of a 19-country tour that has been dogged by controversy over Beijing's treatment of its Tibet region.
After the flame was flown into the city, the administration kept its whereabouts secret, despite the lack of any obvious threat of disruption. China's neighbour Russia is one of Beijing's closest diplomatic allies.
Demonstrations in support of Tibet planned in Saint Petersburg for Friday ahead of the torch's arrival were cancelled at the behest of the authorities, organisers said last week.
City officials said they did not expect any protests to disrupt the relay.
But Russian human rights campaigners on Friday called on athletes to protest against China's rights record at the games.
The opposition Yabloko party said it would hold an unsanctioned demonstration outside the Chinese consulate in the city at 1200 GMT.
Pro-Tibet activists and other groups are planning demonstrations at key locations on the flame's route, including London on Sunday, Paris on Monday and San Francisco on Wednesday.
Protests in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, on March 10 to mark a failed 1959 uprising against Chinese rule escalated into widespread rioting in the city, which then spread to neighbouring Chinese provinces populated by Tibetans.
Russia has said that China's violent clamp-down is not an international diplomatic issue but rather an internal matter for the country to resolve.
- AFP /ls
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