Berlin - A public opinion poll in Germany has shown support for relocating this summer's Olympic Games from Beijing if violence against Tibetan protesters continues, the Bild am Sonntag newspaper reported Sunday. The paper said the Emnid market research company found 66 per cent agreed with the statement that the Games venue should change, to Athens, Greece for example, if Chinese authorities continued to brutally suppress the protests, while 32 per cent disagreed.
Germany's Olympic sports federation, the DOSB, committed itself a week ago to the Games in Beijing and German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier rejected Friday "the kind of boycott debate that is going on in some European member states."
Another German government minister defended in remarks published Sunday the outcome of talks with China on modernizing laws.
Brigitte Zypries, minister of justice, told the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, "We have been able to prompt many things to improve in China (through the rule-of-law dialogue).
"Thanks to the increase in mutual trust, we can raise human rights issues very frankly and we do do so."
She said an example was the fact that China had put protection of human rights and private property in its constitution in 2004.
The newspaper quoted rights group Amnesty International as criticizing the talks, saying, "the focus of the dialogue on improving the rule of law has gradually departed from human rights."
Last year, China called off one of the meetings to protest at Chancellor Angela Merkel meeting in her Berlin office with the Dalai Lama. At the next session on April 21, Zypries will met senior Chinese legal officials in Munich.
On Saturday, a "Tibetan Olympic torch" was welcomed in Munich by about 1,000 Free Tibet demonstrators.
