CHINA: With just one week to go to the Olympic Games, Beijing tightens security and breathes easier as rain and wind help ease pollution

Record ID: 329593

  • Title: CHINA: With just one week to go to the Olympic Games, Beijing tightens security and breathes easier as rain and wind help ease pollution
  • Date: 1st August 2008
  • Summary: EXTERIOR OF BEIJING RAFFLES HOTEL WHERE IOC CHAIRMAN JACQUES ROGGE IS STAYING, WITH POLICE VEHICLES OUTSIDE POLICE VEHICLE TWO POLICEMEN IN RIOT GEAR WALKING WITH DOG SOLDIERS MARCHING PAST THE GREAT HALL OF THE PEOPLE POLICEMEN ON GUARD AT WANGFUJING SHOPPING STREET
  • Embargoed: 16th August 2008 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: China
  • Country: China
  • Topics: Sports
  • Reuters ID: LVA5C0ZFM03ERU7LG4WGTK23GY7F
  • Story Text: Beijing on Friday (August 1) began the one-week countdown to the Olympic Games with tightened security and clearer skies.
    A large number of security guards could be seen patrolling the city's Tiananmen Square and busy shopping areas, while armed police scrutinized passengers on the city's subway stations.
    Meanwhile, concerns over pollution lessened.
    Olympics Games organisers could breathe easier on Friday after showers and a brisk breeze cleared haze that had blanketed China's capital, raising fears of risks to athletes' health.
    Skies over Beijing were the same steel gray as past days, but the rains overnight cooled morning temperatures and swept away much of the fumes and dust.
    Beijing Games officials have denied the haze is a pollution threat while also announcing emergency steps that will kick in if air pollution is bad during the Olympics starting on August 8.
    Figures from the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau (www.bjepb.gov.cn) showed the three pollutants used for the pollution index fell on Thursday (July 31), after a rise early in the week.
    The main worry, particulate matter from vehicles, factories and power plants, was at "moderate" to "good" levels at all measuring stations, after brushing levels considered unhealthy for sensitive people in past days.
    The bureau forecast even better air for Friday, when thousands of athletes and Games officials began pouring in.
    In the city's Tiananmen Square, British tourist Chris Mann said the air quality was better than he'd expected and that the concern expressed by the Chinese for the air and the environment had taken him by surprise.
    "I think what's surprised me is the fact that in the west we have a perception of the Chinese as having very little thought for the environment but coming here, to me it seems very obvious that the Chinese have a great commitment to environmental concerns. Clearly they have a long way to go but then so do we so I think perhaps in some ways the West is being a little bit unfair on the Chinese," he said.
    While the West has focused on the city's air quality, Beijing has concentrated on the capital's security in the preparation for the August Games.
    Beijing has long identified terrorism as the biggest threat to the Games, and security is the top agenda for officials, its Vice President Xi Jinping has said.
    China, eager to use the Games to showcase its rise as a modern economic power, has already instituted a raft of security measures. A 100,000-strong anti-terrorism force is in place.
    Near the National Stadium or Bird's Nest, the main Olympic venue, surface-to-air missiles have been deployed around the major venues and bag searches are conducted on the subway.
    Chinese officials have said the main security worries during the Games focus on separatist militants seeking an independent Uighur homeland in the country's far west Xinjiang region and campaigners for an independent Tibet.
    However, rights groups say that China is using Olympic security as an excuse to crack down on internal dissent, particularly in Xinjiang and Tibet, the scene of the March 14 riots that sparked anti-Chinese protests around the world.
    Last week the Turkistan Islamic Party released a video threatening the Beijing Olympics. The group also claimed responsibility for recent deadly bus blasts in Kunming and Shanghai, which killed five people and wounded at least 26, according to a terrorism monitoring firm in Washington.
    In Beijing, armed policemen could be seen guarding subway stations and street corners. The hotel where International Olympic Committee (IOC) Chairman Jacques Rogge is staying, was also tightly guarded.
    German tourist Thorsten, who was taking a stroll on Beijing's main shopping street Wangfujing said the police presence could be felt in the city but added there was no distraction from the large police corps.
    "For the security reasons I have absolutely no questions that the Olympics will be an absolutely safe Games this year, there's so many police guys but they are not coming in the first line, they are restricted, you seem them everywhere but they don't affect you, they are everywhere around but you feel safe, that's really the point," he said.
    Olympic security costs have spiralled since the 2001 attacks on the United States, but China is hoping to secure the Beijing Games for considerably less than the 1.8 billion U.S. dollars spent in Athens four years ago by using its own forces.
    With large amounts of tourists and participants beginning to arrive in the host city, atmosphere one week ahead of the opening ceremony is beginning to rise.
    The newly-built Olympic venues are visited by throngs of tourists every day, photographing themselves in front of the new symbols for the Chinese capital.
    Wang Zhenxiang was feeling a sense of patriotism as he took a first-hand look at the Bird's Nest stadium.
    "I feel very excited and proud for our motherland. For us to be able to host the Olympics, it shows that the strength and standing of our country is increasing day by day," he said.
    The Olympic Games will kick off at 8.08 p.m. next Friday (August 8) with a 3-hour long opening ceremony.
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