Below The Beltway

The blue-and-white suited “guards” that are following the Olympic Torch around the world are continuing to raise suspicions:

BEIJING, April 10 — As protesters besiege the Olympic torch on its global tour, a phalanx of tall, tough-looking young Chinese men in blue-and-white running gear have vigorously protected the flame — too vigorously in the eyes of those who consider protest a constitutional right.

With their steely demeanor and strong-arm tactics, they have become a symbol of what is going wrong for Chinese authorities who had hoped to make the 2008 Beijing Games a worldwide celebration of China’s friendly new face.

Sebastian Coe, chairman of the Olympic organizing committee for 2012 in London, called the men “thugs” and said they had pushed him around when the flame passed through the city Sunday. A spokeswoman for the Paris police, Marie Lajus, said the men had failed to coordinate with local authorities when they grabbed the torch and put out the flame during protests in the French capital Monday. One torchbearer described them as aggressive and robotic; another called them tense and irritable.

A San Francisco police spokesman, Sgt. Neville Gittens, said city authorities debated whether to allow the Chinese guards to participate in the ceremonies planned Wednesday for the torch’s only stop in North America. In the end, the guards stayed, but the torch was secretly rerouted to avoid protesters.

Fleeing the public and accusations of thuggery were not what Beijing municipal and Olympic organizing committee authorities had in mind last August when they held a public ceremony to swear in the Beijing Olympic Games Sacred Flame Protection Unit. The special squad was made up of closely vetted volunteers from the special forces academy of the paramilitary People’s Armed Police, state-controlled news media reported.

And their tactics were on full display in San Francisco:

A New Yorker bearing the Olympic torch staged a rogue anti-China protest Wednesday even as cops took extreme measures to thwart demonstrators in San Francisco.

As she ran with the flame, Majora Carter, 41, a South Bronx environmental activist, whipped out a small Tibetan flag to condemn China’s human rights abuses in the Himalayan province.

Carter, who hid the flag in her sleeve, was quickly hustled off the route by surprised police who seized the torch.

“I was expressing my right as an American citizen using freedom of speech in support of people who don’t have it,” Carter said. “It just became really clear to me what was going on in Tibet and I wanted to do something.”

Carter said a Chinese paramilitary squad escorting the torch pounced and turned her over to cops, who pushed her into the crowd.

“Apparently, I’m not part of the Olympic torch-bearing entourage anymore,” Carter quipped.

Apparently, this is an example of what the IOC means when it talks about free speech “within limits.”

Here’s the video of Carter’s protest: