24 September,2010 08:17 AM IST | | Hemal Ashar
It is humiliating to see how unprepared this country seems prior to the CWG. The money we have spent as hosts should have been kept aside for our athletes to train for the London Olympics, just two years away. That, though, is digressing.
India must take the blame for all the shoddy work ufffd ceilings collapsing, bridges falling down and filthy living conditions in villages. Yet,u00a0 out makes one think.
Just before the Beijing Olympics in China in 2008, there was a terrorist attack on a police headquarters in the predominantly Muslim province of Xinjiang, designed as a percursor to the Olympics. It was China's most serious act of political terror in more than a decade.
Policemen at a station in Kashgar were doing their morning exercises when a lorry containing two men drove up. They threw two grenades into the exercise yard, and then followed up by slashing the officers with knives.
Some 14 policemen died on the spot, and two more en route to the hospital. China admitted it was a terrorist attack. Xinjiang is home to the Uighurs, a Turkic ethnic group related to the Uzbeks.
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Then, of course, one can never forget the 1972 Munich massacre at the Olympics in Germany, when terrorists aligned to the Palestinian cause took the Israeli Olympic team hostage, killing 11 of them.
In 1972, of course, it was a different world prior to 9/11. Yet, the world, and especially the West, should never forget that the worst security lapse in international sporting history happened on Western soil. Terrorists actually managed to penetrate the Olympic village and take the Israelis hostage.u00a0
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So, while all security fears may be justified, especially after two Taiwanese tourists , were shot at near Jama Masjid, the impression that India may not be secure, is one-sided. Terror and crime has hit sporting events in the West too.
Tennis fans will remember Monica Seles being stabbed at Hamburg once again in Germany when a deranged fan called Gunter Parche ran on to court during a break and stabbed her in the back. It was a humongous security breach. Seles could have been killed, fortunately she survived but she was never again the player she was.
The torch for the Beijing Olympic relay in 2008 had to be snuffed out in Paris because anti-China activists created havoc on the route, both in the French capital and in London. If these had taken place in India, the nation would never have been able to live down theu00a0 lapses. Security concerns about India is convenient amnesia by some.u00a0u00a0u00a0u00a0u00a0u00a0
