Protesters are 'filled with hate' says IOC Vice-President

American protesters kept up the pressure on the Olympic torch farce yesterday. No-one managed to get hold of the torch or to snuff it out but they did force a route change and the no-so-grand finale had to be held at San Francisco airport. That city put its enthusiasm for street protest to good use. The dictators' party was well and truly ruined.

Not everyone is happy though. IOC Vice President Kevan Gosper has accused the protesters of being motivated only by hate, rather than by any legitimate political cause.

These spoilers, these professional spoilers, don't think about this. They are just filled with resentment and hate.

They just take their hate out on whatever the issues are at the time, and that hate against the host country is being taken out on our torch.

That is so clearly untrue that only someone blinded by his own self-interest could come out with such a statement. Most of the people who have protested against the torch have been from the Free Tibet campaign, Chinese dissident groups and human rights organisations like Amnesty International. There has been little sign of the violent protesters that sometimes use large demonstrations as a cover. To my knowledge, few if any members of the public or police officers have been injured and there has been no damage to shops, offices or cars. Although the BBC seem to mention 'the violence of the past few days' in every news report, these have been remarkably peaceful demonstrations.

Now, if you want to see real resentment and hate, you only have to read the utterances of the Chinese regime and its supporters about the Dalai Lama. The murder of protesters in Tibet shows hatred on a different scale from the protesters who simply try to block the passage of a flaming torch.

But Kevan Gosper refuses to see any of that. After all, he was one of the people who chose to award the Olympic Games to China's dictators in 2001.

Mr Gosper seems to get a lot out of being being a senior IOC member. At the Sydney Olympics, his daughter became the first Australian to carry the torch, controversially replacing another Australian girl at the last minute. In 2000, he was cleared of accepting bribes from the Salt Lake City bid team by....erm... the International Olympic Committee.

No doubt he is currently enjoying his time in the limelight with his new friends in Beijing, which is why he is so keen to defend their record on human rights despite claims from Amnesty International that the Olympics may have made things worse. 

Kevan Gosper may once have been a great athlete but that was a long time ago. Now he can see no further than his own ego and self-interest and he is happy to blind himself to the evidence just to shore up his own increasingly shaky position. His comments about the protesters are a disgraceful slur. This odious man, who was instrumental in providing the Chinese tyrants with their showcase of the century, deserves to be pilloried wherever he shows his face.

Update: An Australian MP has called for Kevan Gosper to resign from the IOC. The Liberal Party's Peter Fisher said:

His statements with respect to protesters are absolutely repugnant to ordinary, decent Australians.

Kevan Gosper ought to apologise. He ought to resign. He's not fit to hold his cushy job at the IOC....