It's begun. The official Olympic torch-lighting ceremony in Greece was marred by protestors waving a banner showing Olympic rings transformed into handcuffs, and rushing behind Beijing Games Organizing committee head Liu Qi as he presided over the event. Three representatives of the press-freedom group Reporters Without Borders were hustled roughly off the scene by security personnel. RSF is calling on international VIP’s to boycott the Games opening ceremony to protest China’s imprisonment of more than 100 journalists, Netizens and cyber-dissidents.

The relay will become a gauntlet of anti-Beijing protests, as my colleague Mary Hennock and I blogged about earlier. The Olympic flame is slated to pass through 20 countries and 31 Chinese provinces before arriving in Beijing for the Aug. 8 Olympics opening ceremony. Monday Free Darfur activists announced they were mobilizing demonstrations urging China to “extinguish the flames of genocide” in Darfur in San Francisco on April 9, the day the flame passes through the city.

One of Thailand's six torchbearers has withdrawn in protest. Environmentalist Narisa Chakrabongse said she now declined to take part in the relay to "send a strong message to China that the world community could not accept its actions."