(Adds comment, paragraphs 9,10) By Lindsay Beck BEIJING, Aug 7 (Reuters) - 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 on Friday to be attended by world leaders including Chinese President Hu Jintao and U.S. 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," 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? "GRIM, COMPLICATED" 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 on Thursday 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 Broadfoot. On Wednesday, a small group of U.S. Christians managed to stage a brief protest for religious freedom on Beijing's central Tiananmen Square before being briefly detained. But on Thursday the three were back on the square, even after their details were taken by the police the previous day, and managed to hold a brief news conference and prayer vigil before being dragged off on their knees by plain clothes security. Beijing Games organisers said security was under control. "In our security work, we have adopted a serious level of security and we are confident we can ensure the safety of the Games," Liu Shaowu, security chief of the Beijing organising committee, told a news conference. Some suggest that the measured response to the Tibet protest may have been by design, in order not to create hysteria or to appear too heavy-handed. And analysts say that despite the security issues that are inherent to any event on the scale of the Olympics, the threat in Beijing is minor. "China is a relatively secure place -- you have to keep it in perspective," said Broadfoot. (Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard and Guo Shipeng; Editing by Jeremy Laurence) (For more Olympic stories visit our multimedia website "Road to Beijing" at http://www.reuters.com/news/sports/2008olympics; and see our blog at http://blogs.reuters.com/china)
Human rights activists shout slogans during a protest in front of the Chinese embassy in Berlin August 7, 2008. Supporters of Tibet, Uighur, Monglia and Falun Gong held a protest to ...
