A LEAKED speech by a police commander in charge of security at the 2008 Beijing Olympics has disclosed that the authorities fear mass protests by disaffected Chinese as the biggest threat to the Games.

The officer promised “swift and harsh” measures to forestall trouble, combined with “severe legal punishment”. Human rights campaigners were quick to predict intensified repression, systematically orchestrated by the national security apparatus. The speech was delivered by Yu Hongyuan, a senior officer at the Olympics Security Protection Centre, to a joint meeting of security units on March 12 and was circulated in a restricted government newslet-ter, Beijing Xinfang.

The text was obtained by Chinese Human Rights Defenders, an overseas pressure group. Independent Chinese analysts said it provided a detailed account of confidential plans by the security authorities. “The main aim of ‘security’ for the Olympics will be the suppression of freedom,” the human rights group said. It challenged the International Olympic Committee to hold the Chinese government to promises it had made to guarantee human rights as part of its bid for the Games.

Yu has previously been identified by the state media as the second-ranking officer in the Beijing Public Security Bureau. The leaked speech shows he is responsible for overseeing what the authorities term “collective incidents”, a coded phrase for mass demonstrations.

Yu said he was planning the preventive detention of anyone organising “incitement” and of those who “plot behind the scenes”. He said police were building a databank of people known for bad behaviour, singling out Chinese who use the traditional right to petition government as a means to make trouble.

A typical “troublemaker” would be 50-year-old Ye Guozhu, who is serving a four-year sentence for campaigning against evictions in Beijing to make way for the Olympic building projects. Dubbed “the Olympic prisoner” by activists, Ye has allegedly been beaten and placed in solitary confinement.

The leaked speech also disclosed that during the Games, snatch squads of security men will be posted in Tiananmen Square and other sensitive venues.

To stifle protests, Yu cited a Chinese expression that means “harshly penalising one to teach many a lesson and to frighten many more into submission”.

The targets are Chinese with grievances against the government – over land, wages or rights – who are feared to be planning demonstrations.

Party leaders admitted there were at least 17,000 such “collective incidents” last year. Only last week a man evaded guards and set fire to the portrait of Mao Tse-tung in Tiananmen Square.

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