How seriously did they take security when the Olympic torch relay passed through the streets of Hong Kong on May 2? This seriously:
A poster at the Tianya Forum (today I can only open that page via a proxy. It’s opening fine now) spotted the remarkable similarity between one of the flame attendants in Hong Kong and one of the bodyguards Hu Jintao took with him to the same city for the 10-year anniversary celebrations last summer. Was the Tianya poster right?
Yes, it turns out. (Or NOT, as it really turns out! See Caoshiren’s comment below. But first, humor me and pretend you didn’t know it was BS.) Although the post gave no links or sources, news video of that visit wasn’t very hard to find. And there are two other men in the top photo who can be matched to the presidential bodyguard squad - one on the far right, the other on the far left. Here’s the clip - the key moments to look for start at 53 seconds into the report, and again at 1 minute 22 seconds:
In this still from the footage, Hu Jintao is circled on the left, while our particular small group of bodyguards are circled on the right:
Here’s a higher quality picture (sorry, no link available) that allows us to match three of the men with much greater certainty. (I’ve ruined the photographer’s careful framing of the palm trees by cropping the photo. Even after I’d scaled it down, the file was still way to big.)
And here’s the match-up:
So, the safety of the “sacred” (since when did we become fire worshipers) flame was in very good hands. As far as I can tell, these particular guys did not take part in the relays outside of China. Nevertheless, it’s still extremely sinister - if, that is, you subscribe to the Inscrutable Chinese Communist Menace Theory that prevailed in Britain, France, the United States and Australia during the relay. Alternatively, you could simply say, “So what?” Here’s one example of the Menace Theory from Britain’s Newsnight:
So, who were the “mysterious men in blue,” the press kept asking, rhetorically. Well, as professional journalists, they could have tried asking the right people instead of asking protesters. Or they could have asked themselves, since they should have already known the answer. They were state security men (whatever nonsense Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu might want us to believe). No different from the Greek flame attendants who protected the torch on its journey around the world in 2004. The Greeks were state security officers too. Here’s a picture of two of them in Beijing:
No one called these men “mysterious,” “thugs,” “robotic” or any of the other insulting terms used by many in the British media. (See The Invasion of the robotic thugs by the sometimes mad, sometimes spot-on Brendan O’Neill.) In fact virtually no one called them anything at all because no one cared enough to notice. The Australian government did care enough to refuse to allow the Greeks any security function whatsoever, as it did with the Chinese escorts four years later. In 2004, this caused a minor crisis that put the Australian leg of the relay briefly in doubt. But the Greeks finally agreed to relinquish their security role in Australia, while also being forced to allow armed U.S. security forces to operate on their own territory. But hardly anyone bothered with these two stories.
OK, so there’s one good reason why no one paid any attention to the Greeks - there were fewer of them. But hardly one tried to attack the Athens Olympic torch relay. In the 2008 event, the London leg alone had more incidents than had occurred in the entire history of the Olympics. The much-maligned flame attendants for the Beijing Olympic relay should certainly have been taught a greater range of language skills than simply “stop - run - fast - slow.” But they carried out their job under extremely difficult circumstances, while refraining from any action that could remotely be called excessive force. But no one seemed to think they were worthy of any praise for that. Oh well.
As a postscript, here’s one final link to an editorial from Caijing magazine: Olympics, Nationalism and Han-Tibetan Ties. Hu Shuli gives good advice that all sides would do well to heed if they really want anything good to come of all of this.
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If you’ve read the post from Tianya carefully, you’ll find some poster pointed out (about 15 posts below) that the blue-shirt guards not wearing hats are Hong Kong policemen. They belong to the VIP Protection Unit (VIPPU) of Hong Kong Police. It’s not surprising they’d show up when President Hu visited Hong Kong. Those guards wearing hats are from mainland, and travelled along with the torch relay.
Thanks, Caoshiren! When I read the Tianya post the night before last, the overwhelming majority of those comments did not load - the Net Nanny on some mainland ISPs seems to have a bit of a love-hate relationship with that particular page. But following your suggestion, I went back to it - and lo and behold I discover that 1) you are right, and 2) I had wasted hours of my time tracking down videos and photos and matching identities when other people had already done all this six days ago. Excuse me while I go and shoot myself.
On the other hand, this is one of the nice things about blogging - learning from readers’ corrections.
Excellent point about the hissy fits of the media over the flame attendants, which extends to the hissy fits over the torch relay itself, which had been going on for decades. Even the ’round-the-world tour was not a new phenomenon, as it was put forth first during Athens ‘04, but nobody said that run was “politically motivated” or tried to associate it to Hitler.
Dead on Rob for pointing out the double standard between the Greek security force and Chinese “thugs”…..
Wow, those guards without hats are from the HK police force, and whats the big deal of him showing up defending Hu jin Tao in HK?
After reading the “invasion of the Robotic Thug” A Chinese (me) just have to wonder who are the retards (the bloggers that believe anything that they see written from other retards) who are the thugs and goons? (Those lying fact twisting Brits, Frenchs AMericans politicians and media). Whos robotic? (The same people again, once they see the Chinese, bash bash bash bash bash china, doesnt matter, just BASH).
Ahh suddenly i remember the days in kindergarten, one of the first phrase i learn those days were (and were very popular back then) “what you say what you are”.
Well, Greece isn’t a police state, and in fact the contrasting pix of the Greek torch attendants and the Chinese ones rather give that game away don’t they? I mean, the pic of the chubby chinese bloke with two rather disorganised-looking Europeans in badly fitting sports gear is somewhat different from the Konnie Huq image/s. And of course the “thug” comment (by Sebastian Coe) and the “robotic” one (by Huq) were references specifically to the way they behaved, with examples supplied. Did anyone complain about the way the Greek ones behaved? Interesting point about the Australians four years ago,shows they are consistent and that it wasn’t, as O’Neill said, same old Oz China-bashing.
O’Neill is characteristically dishonest of course - he implies that Coe called them thugs because they did not speak English, having excised the part of the Coe quote where he describes how they pushed him about.
He also somewhat glides over the key difference between the British police, who were (rightly or wrongly) monstering people trying to disrupt the relay and the flame guards (who are from the PAP, not state security) who were monstering, bizarrely, those who had decided to stand with China, or at least the torch relay, like Coe and Huq…
@ Richard.
Did anyone (thugs) trying to snatch the torch, were there any hostility on the streets during the Greek olympic torch relay? Why shouldn’t the torch guards be on high alert when thugs and hostility targeting the torch? If the same happen to the greeks, i am sure they will just smile and say “thats not very nice trying to snatch the torch”.
A couple of pushes, and being on high alert justifies calling them THUGS. Then those who tried to snatch the torch, extinguishing the torch, throwing water bombs, etc. What are they? Human Rights Terrorist? At least their “violence” “thugness” (not really sure whether such a word exist) are all shown on television world wide.
Poor Richard, the Chinese were organized-looking and had nicely fitting sports gear. Dear god…
They look definitely not mainlanders to me.
By the way, that guy is very cute.
bchung/nimrod - this seemed to be a pr issue so I was talking about it from a pr perspective. the appearance (and background) of the PAP guys played into the image the west has of how a police state behaves (any police state - not just a Chinese one), coupled with the fear that Asian dictatorships (Mao’s China, North Korea) attempt to impose a certain type of uniformity. One of the nice things about China is its diversity: one of the saddest things about the Olympics is that the government has in its risk-averse way decided to demonstrate cultural strength through order and uniformity (One World One Dream; One Chinese people, united; nothing and noone must be out of place). Unfortunately this does play to the worst western prejudices, many of which I agree are unpleasant.
The whole idea of sending security guys round the world to guard a torch on foreign territory (or a bicycle race or whatever) seems to me to be an accident waiting to happen. With Greece and France nobody takes them seriously enough as world powers for it to matter perhaps - it was always going to be China that got stuffed on that. On the other hand, it’s hard to imagine what would happen if a bunch of British police barged the president of the Beijing Olympic Committee out of the way on the streets of Beijing. I imagine an apology would be pretty swiftly forthcoming, at the very least. Or tried to tell a Chinese woman carrying the torch how to do it.
As I say (which you do not take into account) it was the head of the UK Olympic committee who called them thugs, on the basis of the way they treated him, not me. I wasn’t there. There was a lot of thuggish behaviour too by the protesters which is, er, why they were arrested…
(and by the way, based on my knowledge of the Greeks, I rather suspect they would “just smile and say “thats not very nice trying to snatch the torch”. There. Now I’ve insulted two nations in one go.
Richard, I get it, but it is still frustrating. China borrows many things from the West. A unified nation state is from the West, Communism is from the West, the ideal of internationalism, i.e. “one world”, is certainly from the West, the Olympics is from the West. Nothing on display that I can see is particularly Chinese. The Western prejudice really comes down to the notion that Chinese are counterfeiting Western culture and doing it in a bad way, and therefore they must show their disapproval. Chinese people have this prejudice, too, e.g. often believing Westerners can’t learn Chinese well enough.
Objectively, the Greeks look pretty menacing to me, especially the guy on the right. I’m guessing the oblong bulge below his stomach is not there for sports purposes.
This is all about politics and perceptions. If you had told anyone the Greek picture was of Rhodesion or Serbian state security officers, all kinds of mental images would ensue. It’s got nothing to do with observed facts.
And Richard, Coe is a Tory. Anyone who so much as breathes across him, let alone a commie, is a thug to him.
I think it boils down to people in one country not liking it when they see police from a foreign land whacking their fellow citizens in their own country. Especially not over a stupid flame.
1936 Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuehrer
2008 One world, one dream
quite unfortunate choice
Yeah, why don’t the Buddhists give up the dharma symbol just because Hitler used the reverse of it as the swastika once. Tsk tsk, quite unfortunate choice, those Buddhists.
Jay, has it occurred to you that people in some country also doesn’t like it when they see foreign protestors assaulting their fellow disabled citizens, especially over a stupid flame? Maybe that’s why those flame guards were there in the first place.
WL, surely people can see the difference between ‘one world, one dream’ and ‘one folk, one empire, one leader’?
In fact, the only similarity is the word ‘one’.
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