This Wall Street Journal article is written by Gordon Fairclough in Shanghai, Stacy Meichtry in Paris, Alistair MacDonald in London, and David Crawford in Belgrade, Serbia:
As the Olympic torch procession fought its way through protesters in London and Paris on its way to Wednesday’s leg in San Francisco, Chinese men in blue-and-white tracksuits guarded the flame, at times shoving away people who tried to get too close.
The guards appear to be members of the Beijing Olympic Games Sacred Flame Protection unit, a detachment of personnel from China’s People’s Armed Police. This paramilitary force has wide-ranging duties, from protecting diplomatic missions to maintaining internal security. Units of the People’s Armed Police were deployed to forcibly quell violent unrest last month in Tibet.
In Tibet and other heavily Tibetan parts of China, Chinese authorities have arrested hundreds of people who they say were either involved in the initial outbreak of violence in Lhasa March 14 or in the unrest that has continued since then. Despite a decisive show of force in China’s vast Tibetan region, authorities have struggled to bring the unrest under control.
Read more articles on this topic:
* Reuters: France criticises Chinese torch security
* The Australian: Flame guarded by ‘elite troopers’
* Foreign Policy: The Olympic torch’s mysterious companions
* The Age (Australia): Torch ‘thugs’ from elite Tibet force
