China Wants Troops To Guard Olympic Torch In Australia

85,000 miles of protest against the Murderers of Beijing! This photo above was taken in Greece on Monday.

CHINA has told Australia its army should oversee the local leg of the Olympic torch relay amid mounting security concerns.
adelaide now
Chinese officials have asked Australian Federal Police to hand over security to its own forces to ensure protests do not mar the relay when it lands in Australia next month.
The move – which has been rebuffed by the AFP – comes as Beijing reels from an embarrassing relay launch in Greece when human rights activists hijacked the event.
China has responded by radically cutting back its relay legs in cities where it expects more trouble, police sources told The Advertiser.
The U.S. city of San Francisco, with a large expatriate Chinese community and Paris – headquarters of Reporters Sans Frontieres, the group behind the Athens protests – have had their legs of the torch relay cut.
It is understood Beijing is concerned that protesters will turn the Australian leg of the relay in Canberra on April 24 into another public relations disaster.

“They’re absolutely wetting their pants but the federal police have really rammed home to them that while the torch is in Canberra security is our responsibility,” a Government source said yesterday.

The Canberra leg will parade a cavalcade of Australian Olympic stars including Ian Thorpe, Jodie Henry, Petria Thomas, Marjorie Jackson-Nelson and Ron Clarke.
It will pass through Federal Parliament and outside the Chinese Embassy in the Canberra suburb of Yarralumla.
The Australian Olympic Committee said yesterday there were no plans to cancel or limit the Canberra leg.
“The relay will definitely go ahead,” said AOC spokesman Mike Tancred.

“We have explained to the Chinese Embassy people have a democratic right in Australia to stage demonstrations and people are free to demonstrate when the torch does arrive, but we would hope that demonstrations are peaceful and won’t disrupt the relay in any way.”

The security taskforce for the relay, formed 18 months ago, includes a Chinese Embassy official, the AFP, the AOC and ACT Government representatives.

Wild Thing’s comment……..
NO NO and NO! . Since when to ChiCom troops get to enforce their human rights violations on NON CHINESE SOIL???
That is so wrong in so many different levels!
#1 — are they saying that the Australian security is incompetent and China’s is not?
#2 — and what exactly will you do to the protestors — reeducate them like you are doing to the Tibetian monks and gun then down or beat them horribly with wood?
#3 — You must think Australia is really dumb enough to allow Chinese armed forces to police public areas…
This whole thing is insane, the Olympic Committee was wrong in every way to let China have the Olympics in their country. The only thing they were thinking about was how much money would be in the briefcases passed under the table to them by the Chicoms if they gave them the olympics.
Can’t you just see it now? A torch runner surrounded by a squad of Chinese cops with helmets on and riot guns at port arms. Showing up with their tanks and the whole thing.
ChiComs are wanting to do this in Aussie land probably because of this:
Protests disrupt Olympic torch ceremony
CNN
OLYMPIA, Greece (CNN) — Activists protesting China’s crackdown in Tibet briefly disrupted the Olympic flame-lighting ceremony in Greece on Monday, calling for a boycott of the Summer Games in Beijing later this year.
Despite the brief disruption by protesters, the Olympic flame began a 130-day, 85,000-mile journey Monday slated to take it from ancient Olympia in Greece to Beijing, China, where the 2008 games are to begin in August.
Charging onto the field of an ancient Greek stadium in Olympia, three protesters unfurled a banner calling for the boycott.
Police said they detained the three French protesters — members of the Paris-based media rights group Reporters Without Borders, who had evaded security to unfurl the black banner, which depicted the Olympic rings as handcuffs.
“If the flame is sacred then so are humans,” the French group said in a written statement. “We cannot let the Chinese seize the Olympic flame, a symbol of piece, without denouncing the dramatic situation of human rights in the country.”
Olympic officials said it was the first time the movement’s flame-lighting ritual had been interrupted by protests at the birthplace of the games.
More protests followed, after the torch began its long trek. A Tibetan woman covered herself with red paint and lay on the ground, forcing the torchbearer to weave around her as other protesters shouted “Flame of shame.”
Other protesters were detained by police for trying to stage a peaceful protest along the torch-relay route.
A pro-Tibet group said in a written statement that two of its members were “violently detained after unfurling banners and Tibetan flags on the road as the torch made its way through Olympia.”