Nairobi - Kenyan Nobel peace prize laureate Wangari Maathai threw her support behind activists protesting China's role in Tibet and Sudan's Darfur region by declining to be a part of the Olympic torch relay in Tanzania this weekend, she said Friday. The Olympic torch, which lands in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on Sunday, has drawn huge crowds of protestors in the cities it has so far stopped in, with tight security trailing the flame throughout its journey.
Maathai, an environmentalist who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004, said she was showing solidarity with activists opposing China's oppressive tactics against protesting monks in Tibet and Beijing's continued investments in Sudan, despite the atrocities being committed in Darfur.
"In all of these issues China can make a difference and that is what the world is urging them to do. I am troubled that these Olympics, rather than being a unifying movement, have become most divisive," she said in a statement.
"I shall not participate as a torch bearer in Dar es Salaam."
The protests hounding the relay have highlighted China's human rights record, and the procession has been called a "crisis" by the International Olympic Committee chief Jacques Rogge.
Tanzania's commercial capital Dar es Salaam is the only stop the torch makes in Africa.
