Tibet protest shows security is weak link

When pro-Tibet protesters unfurled a banner outside Beijing's main Olympic venue, the cause was little surprise. The fact that a security breach could take place just days before the Games open, however, was a shock.

Despite uniformed and plainclothes security fanned out across the city, 300,000 surveillance cameras keeping tabs, tightened visa controls and China's top personnel involved in safety efforts, the group of four protesters managed to spend an hour outside the Bird's Nest stadium before being apprehended.

"It is a surprise, how close it was to the Bird's Nest stadium," said Alexander Neill, head of the Asia Security Programme at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies in London.

The main National Stadium, which can hold some 90,000 people, will be the site of the opening ceremony gala today to be attended by world leaders including Chinese President Hu Jintao and US President George W. Bush.

"You would have thought that just two days before the launch ceremony that whole area would be under surveillance and it is peculiar that these people weren't stopped before they even approached the pylon that they climbed," Mr Neill said.

Two of the four protesters scaled an electricity pylon near the venue, where they unfurled their banner before police took them away - 12 minutes later, according to China's state media.

The intent of the group, while displeasing to China's Communist authorities, was peaceful. But what if adherents to another cause used those 12 minutes to do something more sinister?

On Monday, religious extremists killed 16 police in China's restive far-west, in an attack the government said aimed to disrupt the Games.

"The Olympic security work has entered a decisive battle stage and the situation in the struggle against hostile forces is extremely grim and complicated," China's official Xinhua news agency yesterday quoted an unnamed security official as saying.

Analysts say that while China may have political reasons for overstating the terrorist threat, its security does have holes.

"I think that the security in China is not as tight and as good as the government would like the world to believe," said Bob Broadfoot, managing director of Political and Economic Risk Consultancy Ltd.

He raised the example of the Falun Gong protest a decade ago, when China's leaders awoke to tens of thousands of adherents to the banned spiritual movement staging a vigil outside their heavily guarded compound.

"That's a pretty good example of the fact that there are things going on in China that the security apparatus is not aware of," said Mr Broadfoot.

On Wednesday, a small group of US Christians managed to stage a brief protest for religious freedom on Beijing's central Tiananmen Square before being briefly detained.