April 10, 2008 5:24 AM

How San Francisco helped China suppress a human rights protest

CREDO staffers spent the first half of yesterday distributing signs at the Olympic torch protest here in San Francisco. We spent the second half of the day scratching our heads trying to figure out what happened.

Then we sent an email to our members in the Bay Area asking them to write Mayor Gavin Newsom asking him to apologize to the protesters. Click here to add your voice.

Huge peaceful crowds turned out along the torch relay route to protest human rights abuses in China. So what did the mayor do to ensure China got its photo op? He moved the torch relay in secret to the other side of town, far from the dissenters, to ensure that the Beijing regime got its photo op.

In an incident that has received almost no press, official torch bearer Majora Carter, a courageous environmental activist from the Bronx, unfurled a Tibetan flag during her section of the relay. She was shoved out of the spotlight by the SFPD.

Watch the video here. It's quite remarkable.

She later described the "bait and switch" and her torch experience:

"It was a trick to make sure the protesters had nothing to do," said the New Yorker, one of two torchbearers who pulled out a Tibetan flag during her run.

She grabbed it from her sleeve at Van Ness Avenue and Chestnut Street. Chinese security forces pulled her over, she said, and San Francisco police shoved her into the crowd and out of the relay.

"But I had an extra flag in my underwear," said Carter, executive director of Sustainable South Bronx, a nonprofit. "Three Tibetan nationals who came up to me cried. This tiny act meant so much to them."

If you know anyone who attended the protest, urge them to tell Mayor Newsom to apologize for chosing to create a propaganda photo-op for the Chinese government rather than defend our right to protest on behalf of human rights.