Beijing Olympic Games 2008

The director of security for the Beijing Olympic organizing committee said Wednesday the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and American Embassy were invited to directly participate in the investigation into the stabbing of two family members of the U.S. Olympic volleyball coach last week.

Liu Shaowu said Tang Yongming, 47, was “encountering family difficulties and was extremely depressed” when he attacked and killed Todd Bachman and seriously wounded his wife Barbara at Beijing’s Drum Tower, a popular tourist destination.
“This is an isolated incident,” he said. “The police have already investigated this whole incident very closely already and announced the results…. We don’t think there will be any effect on the Olympic Games themselves.”

Shaowu said recent increases in security–two armored tanks were parked outside the official media center Tuesday–did not indicate an increased threat to Olympic visitors or media.

from:washingtonpost.com

Chinese security forces should smile more to stop terrifying foreign visitors, a Norwegian member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Gerhard Heiberg, told the Aftenposten daily on Monday.

“The police and military … need to act differently. They have stony faces. They’re seriously scaring the foreigners in Beijing. Something has to be done,” he said.

“The fact that they’re armed and look sinister, just makes things worse,” he added.

Heiberg said he had talked to China’s political authorities and Olympics organisers about the issue.

“I’ve asked them to get people to smile more,” he said, noting that his request was met with … laughs.

source: afp.google.com

A Chinese Islamic group that has threatened to attack the Beijing Olympics released a new video warning Muslims to avoid being on planes, trains and buses with Chinese at the games, a U.S. group that monitors militant organizations said Thursday.

The video was purportedly made by the Turkistan Islamic Party, which seeks independence for China’s western Xinjiang region, the SITE Intelligence Group said. The militants are believed to be based in Pakistan, where security experts say core members have received training from al-Qaida.

Last month, the group issued videotaped threats and claimed responsibility for a series of bus bombings in China. The new video, issued just ahead of Friday’s opening of the games, features graphics similar to ones used earlier: a burning Olympics logo and an explosion imposed over an apparent Olympic venue.

The speaker in the six-minute video wears a black turban and covers his face. Gripping a Kalashnikov rifle, he speaks in the Turkic language of the Uighurs, a largely Muslim minority in China’s western Xinjiang territory. The Uighurs have with a long history of tense relations with the central government.

Urging Muslims to “choose your side,” the man warns: “Do not stay on the same bus, on the same train, on the same plane, in the same buildings, or any place the Chinese are,” according to a translation by SITE.

More than 100,000 soldiers and police are guarding Beijing and other Olympic cities. Terrorism experts say the heavy security would likely force attackers to target less-protected areas.

“I think the actual Olympics themselves, the venues, the guests, the athletes, are going to be safe,” said Drew Thompson, director of China studies at the Nixon Center in Washington.

He added that Uighur groups haven’t demonstrated any capabilities of attacking Beijing or other cities during the games. He also said there’s nothing in the previous video that establishes conclusively that the Turkistan Islamic Party was involved in the explosions it claimed to have a hand in.

But he added, “There’s obviously significant numbers of Uighurs … with some sort of cause who have a grudge against … Chinese authority and are prepared to use violence to seek whatever objectives they’re seeking.”

This week, Chinese authorities say two Uighurs staged one of the most audacious attacks in years in Xinjiang. The men stole a truck and rammed it into a group of 60 border police during in Kashgar, a small city near the border with Pakistan and Afghanistan, authorities say. The men, who were later arrested, continued the attack with homemade bombs and knives, killing 16 police, officials said.

Authorities have called the men terrorists, but officials have released no evidence linking them to a specific group.

The video issued Wednesday claims the communist regime’s alleged mistreatment of Muslims justifies holy war. It accuses China of forcing Muslims into atheism by capturing and killing Islamic teachers and destroying Islamic schools, according to the SITE. It says China’s birth control program has forced abortions on Muslim women.

Xinjiang’s capital, Urumqi, appeared to be on high alert Thursday. Security guards were checking bags at the entrances of hotels, department stores and discos in the busy city, where office towers and apartments buildings have been shooting up in recent years.

Guards with red arm bands rode on most public buses, watchful for attackers. Small groups of police patrolled the sidewalks of the bustling Muslim quarter, where merchants cooked lamb kebabs and sliced up watermelons at fruit stands.

The officers were largely ignored by the Uighur women in colorful head scarves and the men wearing skull caps decorated with elaborate embroidery or sequins, who haggled over goods or shouted into mobile phones.

Meanwhile, in Kashgar — an hour and half west of Urumqi by plane — the police killed in Monday’s attack were declared to be “revolutionary martyrs” during a memorial ceremony, state-run Xinhua News Agency reported.

“The people of all ethnic groups in Kashi will remember you forever,” said one banner held up by the crowd, Xinhua said, using the Chinese name for the town.

Although signs and slogans around the city urge people to “build a harmonious Kashgar,” the residents seem to be far from achieving the goal. Mutual resentment and contempt is almost palpable and seems to simmer beneath a facade of relative calm.

At the Hua Du Hotel in northwestern Kashgar, a help wanted poster said the business wanted to hire workers who were female and Han Chinese — the nation’s majority ethnic group.

The manager, who wouldn’t give her name, said, “We need someone with good language skills and most Uighurs can’t speak Chinese well. We also have high standards for cleaning the rooms, and Uighurs just can’t meet those standards.”

In Kashgar’s Old City district, a 22-year-old Uighur shopkeeper said that Xinjiang independence was virtually impossible. The man, who only gave his English name Michael because he feared reprisals, said he opposed violent attacks on Han Chinese.

But he added, “I don’t like the Chinese because they don’t like Uighurs. We are Muslims and they dislike Islam. We have different values. We’re two different people.”

from:ap.google.com

The government has installed about 300,000 cameras in Beijing and set up a network to spy on its citizens and foreigners.

The blocking of human rights websites in China leading up to the Olympics is part of an information control and surveillance network awaiting visitors that will include monitoring devices in hotels and taxis and snoops almost everywhere.

Government agents or their proxies are suspected of stepping up cyber-attacks on overseas Tibetan, human rights and press freedom groups and the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement in recent weeks. And China is spending huge sums on sophisticated surveillance systems that incorporate face recognition technology, biometrics and massive databases to help control the population.
China has installed about 300,000 cameras in Beijing under an estimated $6.5-billion, seven-year program dubbed the Grand Beijing Safeguard Sphere. Although face recognition software still can’t process rapidly moving images, China hopes that it can soon electronically identify faces out of a vast crowd.

“China is trying to project a picture and a narrative about the Olympics,” said Nicholas Bequelin, Hong Kong-based researcher with Human Rights Watch. “By limiting journalists, shutting down the Internet, arresting activists, it’s hoping to control the message.”

The world’s most populous nation has legitimate concerns, as seen this week in an attack in the far western province of Xinjiang that killed 16 police officers. Few expect the security infrastructure to be even partially dismantled, a step Greece took after hosting the 2004 games.

Critics said these systems give China more advanced tools in its bid to control domestic critics, activists and media. In recent months China has recruited thousands of Beijing taxi drivers and hundreds of thousands of neighborhood busybodies to keep an eye on foreigners and its own citizens.

“Everyone feels they’re entering a police state, which by the way it is, duh,” said Sharon Hom, executive director of New York-based Human Rights in China. “So they’ve got people reporting down to the lowest neighborhood level, which is not new, overlaid by state-of-the-art technology. It’s the best of the old and the new.”

Another technology that raises concern involves the new identity cards China is phasing in for its 1.3 billion citizens. The cards, developed with help from Plano, Texas-based China Information Security Technology, carry radio signal devices and a chip that records not only a person’s height, weight and identification number, but also health records, work history, education, travel, religion, ethnicity, reproductive history, police record, medical insurance status and even his or her landlord’s phone number.

Near the Second Ring Road in downtown Beijing, Wu Naimei, 74, sat on a folding chair fanning herself. “If we see any suspicious people, we call the police and report on them,” the retired subway worker said, adding that she can’t define a suspicious person but knows one when she sees one. “We are happy to help protect our motherland, assist the nation and help our leaders relax.”

The West might have a stronger argument in questioning China’s potential for intrusive surveillance if it weren’t moving rapidly in the same direction. London is believed to have the largest number of closed-circuit TV cameras of any city in the world. Many countries have seen vast troves of personal data lost or stolen. Financial records and phone calls are now routinely monitored.

The difference is that Western countries have better checks on police power, some human rights activists said, even as they expressed concern that the U.S. could soon be using technologies developed in China.

“Every country wants to avoid abuse of police power,” said Xu Zhiyong, a lecturer at the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications. “It’s getting better in China, but we still have a ways to go.”

In addition to blocking online information about corruption and human rights violations, the government is suspected of collecting information on visitors’ Internet search activity.

Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) said late last month that foreign-owned hotels in China were under pressure to sign contracts authorizing police to install hardware and software to monitor their guests’ Internet activity. Hotel managers contacted in Beijing declined to comment.

This followed a State Department warning in March that “all hotel rooms and offices are considered to be subject to on-site or remote technical monitoring at all times.” Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang quickly called the U.S. report irresponsible and denied that China employed more surveillance than normal.

In Beijing, two taxi drivers who asked not to be identified while discussing confidential matters displayed a pair of black button-sized devices just to the left of their steering wheel linked to the vehicle’s navigation system. They said the devices allow a central monitoring station to listen to anything inside the taxi.

One driver said that besides listening in on passengers, officials can hear any griping he might do about the Communist Party, which could result in punishment.

The Danish women’s soccer team caught two men spying on its members in September during a FIFA World Cup meet in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, Lars Berendt, the group’s communication director, said in a telephone interview from their headquarters in Brondby.

Berendt said team members were in a hotel room having a tactical meeting when they noticed some movement behind what turned out to be a one-way mirror. In an adjoining room, they found two men, at least one of whom wore a hotel badge, and they held them until police arrived.

Berendt said the hotel denied any knowledge of the incident, and the International Olympic Committee and FIFA, the international governing body of soccer, said it was a matter for local authorities. Chinese police haven’t commented on any investigation.

“We’re not holding our breath,” Berendt said.

The state-run New China News Agency quoted fans as saying the Danes were just sore losers.

Security experts say company executives attending the Olympics are being advised to bring computers that have been wiped clean and to safeguard their smart phones. In extreme cases, they are also weighing the laptop to the gram to test whether ultra-light hardware devices have been added.

But a Western security consultant for one Olympic sponsor who asked not to be identified given the sensitive nature of his work said many of these fears were overblown, and that Chinese police had better things to do than spy on every “self-important corporate executive.”

Li Wei, a counter-terrorism expert with the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, a semiofficial research organization, said most Chinese surveillance was in line with that of other Olympic host nations and didn’t dangerously compromise privacy.

Still, experts such as Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center and author of a recent report on Chinese surveillance, believe that China is pushing the envelope.

“With Internet controls, there are ways around,” Rotenberg said. “But with surveillance technologies, you’re getting into the fabric of the state.”

source: latimes.com

After Tibet, the theme of religious freedom is once again at the centre of a fresh protest in Beijing 48 hours before the Olympic opening ceremony is to get underway. Three US Christian activists, two men and a woman, have put on a protest on the edge of Tiananmen Square against religious repression and the abortionist policy limiting couplet o a single child. The three, members of the organization Christian Defence Coalition, unrolled a banner in English and Mandarin saying that “Jesus Christ is King”, according to spokesman Rob Schenck. The demonstration only lasted a few moments, since, while the three knelt down to pray, police intervened and tore down the banner, taking the activists away in a police van according to Shenck, who said that since then he has not been able to contact them. The three are: J. Mahoney, Brandi Swindell and Michael McMonagle. This morning four pro-Tibetan activists, two Americans and two Britons, raised a banner saying “Free Tibet” in front of the “Bird’s Nest” stadium, the heart of the Olympics, before being arrested.

from: agi.it

Beijing’s security-obsessed police have been told not to interfere in foreign journalists’ news coverage, part of efforts to show openness while avoiding embarrassment at the Beijing Olympics which begin on Friday.
The Games have galvanised global critics of China on an array of issues, including journalists’ freedom to report, media access to the Internet and the treatment of dissidents, petitioners and Tibetans.
According to an internal document seen by Reuters, new rules issued last week instruct Beijing police not to interfere with anti-government public speeches concerning the banned spiritual movement Falun Gong, Xinjiang, Tibet or Taiwan independence.
They can only intervene if there is “drastic action that attracts a crowd or affects public order” on the capital’s Tiananmen Square or other politically sensitive sites.
The rules were introduced after an outcry in the Hong Kong media over police shoving reporters covering the chaotic last-minute sale of Olympic tickets late last month. An officer was kicked in the groin and taken to hospital.
The rules also bar police from blocking camera lenses of photographers and television cameramen covering news or damaging their equipment.
Law enforcement authorities are not allowed to seize camera memory cards, the document said, adding that reporters cannot be taken to police stations for questioning in “ordinary cases.”
Police were also told not to interfere in foreign journalists’ interviews with evicted residents, farmers deprived of land, laid-off workers, discharged servicemen, those anti-Japanese or anti-French and human rights activists unless there is drastic action, a crowd gathering or public order is disrupted, the document said.
France became the target of protests after disruptions to the Paris leg of the Olympic torch relay. Many in China harbour resentment of Japan’s 1931-45 occupation of parts of the country.
Instead, police should collect evidence during protests and eventually deal with locals in accordance with the law, it said, adding that foreign reporters would be targets of surveillance, it said.
“Foreign reporters will no longer be prohibited from filming on Tiananmen Square,” a law enforcement official told Reuters, requesting anonymity to avoid repercussions for speaking to a foreign reporter.
China’s state news agency Xinhua said journalists need to apply 24 hours beforehand to take pictures on the square — the centre of student-led demonstrations for democracy crushed by troops in 1989.
“This kind of thing is good news if it is enforced,” said Bob Dietz of the Committee to Protect Journalists. “What we’ve seen in the past is that the central government has instituted rule changes and then when it comes for them to be implemented on the ground local authorities don’t follow through.”
In Kashgar, where a bomb attack killed 16 policemen on Monday, baton-waving security forces chased two Reuters reporters down the street.
Japan’s Kyodo news agency said paramilitary police detained and beat up two Japanese journalists in the restive northwestern city, some 3,000 miles (5,000 km) west of Beijing.
A source with ties to the leadership said China in a policy change will no longer insist on a “peaceful” Olympics with no untoward incidents.
“Instead of preventing things from going wrong, the focus will now be on how to deal with things when they go wrong,” the source told Reuters, requesting anonymity.

from: reuters.com

On a map, the city of Kashgar looks a world away, more than 4000km west of Beijing across China’s vast girth.

But yesterday, the oasis city in the fractious region of Xinjiang felt closer than the Great Wall, that enduring monument to China’s mighty dynasties which lies inside the Beijing Municipality.

News of the deadly terrorist attack on jogging policemen in Kashgar was a bloody reminder that security remains a pressing concern for the Olympics.

Trudging through Beijing’s security checkpoints (operated, it has to be said, far more efficiently than those of Sydney or Athens) it’s easy to become blase and cynical as the guards dig through your bag.

Is this just for show? How much is it about control and how much is it about protection?

Kashgar’s separatist guerrillas delivered the answer, even though they struck far from the birds nest-like National Stadium.

For those of us in Beijing, the threat has seemed undaunting. Rower Rob Waddell, back for his third Olympics, noted yesterday that the level of security was high, but only on a par with anything he had experienced before.
“You’re certainly not going to get anywhere without your accreditation,” he said. “It’s what you expect and you feel perfectly safe on the course and inside the village.”

In the co-host city of Shenyang, though, the men’s soccer team feel more oppressed.

Coach Stu Jacobs said yesterday that moving around the city was almost impossible and that the team were virtually confined to the team hotel and the grounds.

“They’re very adamant that if you go off-site, someone needs to accompany you,” he said. Players are biding their time watching movies downloaded to their i-Pods.

It’s understandable things are a little tenser in Shenyang. It’s far from the missile and fighter-jet enhanced protective cloak around Beijing and New Zealand’s Oly-Whites are due to face host China tomorrow.

Are any of China’s domestic enemies determined enough to seek a starring role during these Games? Perhaps that’s a thought to ponder in the security checkpoint queue.

source: nzherald.co.nz

Officials moved immediately to reassure competitors and visitors to Beijing they would be safe when the Games get under way on Friday.

“We have strengthened security work in all Olympic venues and in the Olympic village. We are well-prepared in security for the upcoming Games,” said Sun Weide, spokesman for the Beijing organising committee.

The attack, a stunning embarrassment to the authorities whose intelligence had been warned of possible attacks this week, took place in Kashgar, a remote outpost of Chinese rule in the west of Xinjiang province not far from the border with Central Asia, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Xinjiang’s Muslim, ethnic Uighur, population have a history of clashes with the authorities, but there have been no major confirmed terrorist incidents since a wave of bombings in the 1990s.

The authorities have repeatedly warned of the risk of attacks on the Olympics by Islamic and “separatist” groups based in the region, though they also insisted that security in the region was under control.

Chinese state media said that two men drove a dump-truck at a group of policemen out for early morning exercise, crashed to a halt and threw grenades or home-made explosive devices. They then began slashing at survivors with knives before being overwhelmed and arrested.

Fourteen policemen died at the scene, two more died on the way to hospital, and 16 others were injured. Debris from five explosive devices was also recovered, the reports added.

Tourists in Kashgar, a Silk Road city that was a central location of the “Great Game” played out 100 years ago between the Russian and British empires for control of central Asia, said they heard loud bangs, and then were kept in their hotels while searches were carried out.

Timothy O’Rourke, an American, said the authorities had cleaned the site but the damage remained visible. “You can see there are windows that are broken in a nearby building and a pole has been ripped out of the ground,” he said. “You can see some wires hanging from another pole nearby,” he said.

Although no group claimed responsibility, connections will be made with a video posted on a website 10 days ago by a group calling itself the “Turkestan Islamic Party” (TIP). East Turkestan is the name under which Xinjiang briefly declared independence in the 1940s before being reconquered by Chairman Mao’s People’s Liberation Army.

In the video, “Commander Seyfullah” claimed responsibility for a number of small but lethal bus bombings in China in recent months, and said “critical points” for the Olympics would be targeted with further attacks. China denied the group claims, and said there was still no evidence yesterday’s attacks had an Olympic connection.

The International Olympic Committee said it had confidence in Beijing’s security preparations for the Games.

Exile groups such as the World Uighur Congress previously accused the authorities of exaggerating and manufacturing the terrorist threat to justify indiscriminate arrests and repression in the region.

Last night, its European representative, Dilxat Raxit, said telephone reports from the region confirmed the incident. He said the Congress opposed violence, but he accused the Chinese of provoking a response.

“We do not wish to see such events, nor would we want a repeat,” he told The Telegraph last night. “But we cannot prevent Beijing’s systematic suppression of the Uighur people, nor are we able to control such acts as these. The Chinese authorities’ policies and behaviour force Uighurs down the road towards millitary action and attack.”

One Uighur terrorist group, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), which may be the same as the TIP, is accused by both the United States and China of links to al-Qaeda. Its numbers are unknown, and it was at one time thought to have disintegrated after its leader was killed in Pakistan in 2003.

Analysts say no Uighur group is thought to be sophisticated enough to penetrate the ring of steel which the Chinese authorities have thrown around Beijing for the Games, deploying more than 100,000 security personnel.

Nevertheless, in a separate incident in Beijing itself, a small group of protesters clashed with police near Tiananmen Square. They were local residents who had been evicted from their homes just south of the Square to make way for a new shopping district.

They were surrounded but not arrested by police, who are deeply sensitive about any form of demonstration on the Square. Eventually they were led away by members of the local neighbourhood committee, the lowest reaches of the Communist Party.

from: telegraph.co.uk

Spectators at the Beijing Olympics are to be left in no doubt about the high standard of behaviour expected of them by the Games’s Chinese organisers, with giant signs erected detailing the draconian rules imposed on visitors.

The 15ft-high yellow signs have been erected at the turnstiles of all Olympic venues, looming over spectators as they queue to take their seats and giving an exhaustive nine-point list of “do’s and dont’s”.

Prohibitions range from the usual bans on smoking, gambling and assaulting athletes and officials, to more peculiar restrictions on opening umbrellas and standing up in your seat.

On the ever-sensitive subjective of political protests, visitors are warned in no uncertain terms that protests on any subject from politics, to the environment and animal rights will not be tolerated.

Actions deemed “inappropriate” include any “demonstrating or fundraising activities, including but not limited to, commercial, religious, political, military, territorial, human rights, and animal and environmental protection activities”.

The word “territorial” should not be overlooked: though it no doubt applies to any of the world’s regional disputes, it is aimed squarely at any Free Tibet protesters who have managed to circumvent the government’s tight visa and security controls.

At the Bird’s Nest stadium yesterday, foreign visitors questioned whether the signs were in the spirit of the Olympic ideals, even if they did conform with Chapter Five of the Olympic Charter which bans “any kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda … in any Olympic sites, venues or other areas”.

“The signage does feel a little bit aggressive and ‘in your face’,” said Frank Lejeune who is working as a technician at the Games. “I can definitely think of more welcoming signs they could have put up.”

Beijing’s residents are used to being told in frank terms what they can and cannot do - lists of rules are commonly displayed in parks and at residents’ associations.

The Beijing Organising Committee defended its rules when they were announced as “virtually the same” as those employed at the Sydney and Athens Olympics.

However, at neither Sydney nor Athens were the regulations displayed with such prominence, in such an intimidating manner, or in so obviously legalistic language.

Then again, few other Olympic cities have such an overt approach to propaganda work. Red banners have sprouted all over the city in recent days exhorting citizens to show their enthusiasm - and their obedience to the Party line.

“I participate, I contribute and I enjoy,” a banner at the entrance to one of the parks set aside for “protest pens” at the Games reads. “Welcome Olympic Games with joyfulness and construct a harmonious society,” says the banner at the other entrance.

Wardens yesterday were patrolling the park demanding that passing journalists not conduct interview with local people.

Among the stranger banners exhibited elsewhere is one that reads: “Go outside less - give our foreign friends some space.”

They are all part of a clean-up of the city which has involved laying out 40 million flower pots, festooning building sites with billboards painted with scenes of what the developments will eventually look like, and removing beggars, dissidents, the mentally ill, and hundreds of thousands of poor migrant workers from the streets of the city.

from: telegraph.co.uk

Foreign and local protesters who want to speak out against the Beijing Olympics are required to apply five days in advance, and not harm “national interests,” the security chief for the Olympic organizing committee said.

Accused of repressing dissent, China recently said it would allow officially approved demonstrations to be held at three parks in the capital.

Liu Shaowu, security chief for the Beijing Organizing Committee, detailed the steps necessary on a statement posted on the official Olympics news Web site Saturday, but warned that China has a broad ban against gatherings deemed “harmful” to national interests.

“Assembling to march and protest is a citizen’s right. But it must be stressed that when exercising this right, citizens must respect and not harm others’ freedoms and rights and must not harm national, social and collective interests,” Liu said in the statement.

Chinese citizens must turn in a written application to police while foreigners must submit an application to the border entry-exit administration.

Police will inform applicants whether they received approval at the latest two days before the protest, he said. If they don’t hear from the police, that can be taken as approval, Liu said.

China has always been wary of protests of any kind. But the government apparently agreed in hopes of blunting criticism that the Summer Games allowed for no public protests. The protest areas are in public parks several miles from the main Olympic stadium.

Tightened visa checks have prevented or deterred foreign groups like the Committee to Protect Journalists from coming to Beijing, although Dream for Darfur said its visa application was pending.

Overseas broadcasters, such as NBC which paid hundreds of millions of dollars to air the games, are still wrangling with organizers over restrictions on live coverage around the city.

source: ap.google.com