Violence taints the Beijing Games

So far, the police have had little difficulty dealing with the sort of political threats that officials had feared might get out of hand, such as illegal demonstrations.

The most active foreign group, “Students for a Free Tibet,” has pulled off nearly daily stunts. On Sunday, five protesters unveiled a banner outside Beijing’s iconic Tiananmen Square before police detained them. In recent days, climbers hung a banner demanding Tibetan independence from a 120-foot-high lamp post, three activists unfurled a Tibetan flag for a few seconds outside the National Stadium before the opening ceremony, and five more staged a “die-in” on Tiananmen Square on Saturday, wrapped in Tibetan flags.

All those involved were quickly bundled away, held for a few hours and then deported. “The police are trying hard to use civilized ways to stop protests being seen by the outside world,” says Ms. Chen. One morning last week, for example, policemen opened umbrellas to shield three protesting Christians on Tiananmen Square from press photographers.

Though foreign media have reported on such protests, the local Chinese-language media have ignored them completely. The demonstrations so far “matter very little,” says Drew Thompson, head of China studies at the Nixon Center in Washington. “They are being carried out by foreigners and Chinese people are not associating with them.”

Chinese citizens are not being allowed to demonstrate against the government either, even if they follow special rules announced for the Olympic period that were supposed to regulate protests.

Three parks have been assigned for approved protests, Liu Shaowu, head of security for the Games’ organizing committee told reporters two weeks ago. Spokesmen for two of those parks said Sunday they had been given no further information, nor any indication that any protests have been approved. Nobody answered the telephone at the third park.

Three Chinese groups are known to have applied for permits to protest in one of the official zones; one applicant, Zhang Wei, who lost her home when the Beijing government redeveloped her neighborhood, was taken from her house by policemen early last Wednesday, family members said, and has not been seen since.

Another applicant was warned by police to return to his home province, several hundred miles from Beijing. Leaders of the third group were sent back to Suzhou, a few hours away by train, escorted by police.

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