Mick Hartley

After Japan, Seoul:

Thousands of young Chinese assembled to defend their country’s troubled Olympic torch relay pushed through police lines on Sunday, some of them hurling rocks, bottled water and plastic and steel pipes at protesters demanding better treatment for North Korean refugees in China.

Two North Korean defectors living in South Korea poured paint thinner on themselves and tried to set themselves on fire in an attempt to protest what they condemned as Beijing’s inhumane crackdown of North Korean refugees, but the police stopped them, according to witnesses and the police.

The South Korean police and Chinese students also overpowered at least two other protesters who tried to impede the run along a 15-mile route through Seoul. The route was kept secret until the last minute and guarded by more than 8,300 police officers.

According to the Marmot’s Hole, a pro-Tibet protestor was surrounded and beaten up by what they call “New Red Guards” in the lobby of a hotel. In this Youtube video, you can hear the Red Guards chanting “Beat him to death,” and “Long live China”.

In Lhasa, meanwhile, preparations are underway:

China will seal off the Tibetan capital this week before the arrival of the Olympic torch relay, closing the Himalayan city to farmers and insisting that even schoolchildren must carry new passes. Panic buying has gripped the city as hundreds of thousands of people prepare for the tight security restrictions.

Details of the lockdown in Lhasa emerged as official Chinese media reported that a specially adapted Olympic torch had arrived yesterday at the Tibetan base camp of Mount Everest. Organisers hope that an ascent will mark the literal high point of the global torch relay.

Certainly China is taking no chances of disruption to the procession when it wends its way through the capital. Farmers for miles around have been told that they will not be allowed to enter the city to sell their produce from May 1. Every resident of Lhasa must register for a special pass.

Residents said that they could not remember such draconian restrictions on movement since martial law was imposed in the city after several days of deadly riots when rampaging Tibetans opposed to Chinese rule set fire to swaths of the city in March 1989.

At least there’ll be no protests today.

North Korea said it was preparing an “amazing” welcome, indicating that the totalitarian regime would mobilize hundreds of thousands of flower-waving people.