Snow Wolf Commandos do London

Not security guards but flame attendants. And not Chinese students, but the People’s Armed Police, says the Indy:

The mysterious Chinese guards who provoked an outcry as they aggressively protected the Olympic torch this week have been revealed as a paramilitary spin-off from the country's army, according to reports. Chinese state television has said that the squad – who wore distinctive blue tracksuits – were handpicked from the People's Armed Police (PAP).

The PAP, part of the the People's Liberation Army (PLA), is accused of suppressing recent protests in Tibet. The Free Tibet Campaign says it received eyewitness accounts connecting the PAP with brutality, including firing live ammunition into crowds of Tibetan protesters on 3 April in Grdze county in the Sichuan province.

Let’s take a quick look at the PAP. For a start, they’re a paramilitary gendarmerie. They come under the Ministry of Public Security, ie the police ministry, though they have their origins in the “public security army”, the branch of the PLA which performed policing duties in Communist controlled areas before 1949. That was disbanded during the cultural revolution – some fairly serious weaponry was leaking from it to various Red Guard factions – and the army performed internal security duties until the PAP was formed in 1983. It still has military ranks and command structures.

Many senior PLA officers were reportedly unhappy at having to clear the protestors from Tiananmen in 1989, and as a result of that the PAP was distanced further from the armed forces and had its numbers greatly increased. In other words, if this report is true they’re not just Chinese cops, but the branch of Chinese law enforcement tasked specifically with political repression.

Eurosport gives us the PAP’s version of its current mission, courtesy of its own newspaper:

The People's Armed Police News said a "political mobilisation order" had gone out to the People's Armed Police troops telling them to prepare for an arduous time ensuring order and control before and during the Games in August.

"The drums of war are sounding, a decisive battle is at hand. For the sake of the Chinese nation's image and for the honour of the People's Armed Police, let us never forget our duty," it said.

International Olympic Committee (IOC) official Kevan Gosper said the Chinese were taking security very seriously and that preparations had been "excellent".

Excellent, eh? There are lots of different sub units in the PAP that do everything from guarding gold mines to enforcing traffic laws. Xinhua tells me that the unit specifically responsible for Olympic security is called the Snow Wolf Commandos. And here they are when they’re not wearing baby blue tracksuits.

Comments

[ajay]

The "Snow Wolf Commandos" are beating people up on the streets of London and Paris? Good lord. In the deathless words of Alex Renton, "We've been colonised. And we haven't even been colonised by anyone decent. We've been colonised by wankers."

[Chris Williams]

Hmm . . . pretty much everywhere has got a gendarmerie, usually under the War Ministry, and reading their job description often makes subjects of Common Law jurisdictions go a bit "Ooohh, get her! How dare they not mumble about the relationship between violence and the state!" But it's SOP on most of the planet.

NB: The UK also has a gendarmerie. It's called the 'British Army'.

[ejh]

"Effete wankers" surely? I have to say that the chaps above don't look particularly effete. Though out of uniform, who knows?

[ajay]

Notice the way they're all doing the "talk to the hand" gesture in unison.

[ajay]

The UK also has a gendarmerie. It's called the 'British Army'.

Yes, and I can't help thinking that if British squaddies in tracksuits started beating up unarmed Chinese protestors on the streets of Beijing, that might not go down well either.

[Chris Williams]

Unless they'd cleared it beforehand unofficially with the PP or the PAP. How very plausibly deniable.

[Phil]

The UK also has a gendarmerie. It's called the 'British Army'.

Can we page David Flin from here? I'm sure he's said some interesting stuff in the past about the forces' attitude to policing (fairly brisk) and the police (not too positive).

[Alex]

Errr, it's not the fact that China has a gendarmerie that's the problem here...it's more the "foreign plainclothes security police beating the shit out of thoughtcriminals in the middle of London" angle.

[jamie]

Well the logic of the "if you've got nothing to hide" position is "then you've got nothing to fear from Chinese paramilitary headbreakers."

[Chris Williams]

Yabbutt . . . how do I put this delicately . . . generally, if _you're_ the one who's in charge of the legal demo, and the cops on the ground are dealing politely with you, then they are likely to be nodding along with you when you talk about how well stewarded your contingent will be, not ask searching questions about who the stewards are and what they will be doing if it kicks off.

This was, significantly, also true in the 1930s and the 1970s. I'm not saying it's a good thing, merely that it's same old same old.