28 April 2008
Tutu urges leaders to miss Beijing opening
(Reuters) Archbishop Desmond Tutu urged world leaders to stay away from the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics in August. "The leaders of the free world, for goodness sake, don't attend the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games until it is quite clear that they [the Chinese] mean business and that they will stop the violence against the Tibetans", Tutu said at a Cape Town ceremony for the Tibetan Independence Torch. South Africa's Nobel Peace laureate lit the Tibetan Independence Torch, which was kindled in Delhi on 30 January and will travel to cities on five continents before arriving in May back in Dharamsala. "Let us make China know this is a moral universe", Tutu said.