Eggs, reptiles and surfboards banned for G20

Eggs, tinned food, reptiles and surfboards will be banned in parts of Brisbane this week as Australia's largest peacetime deployment of police and soldiers braces for everything from unruly protests to mass hostage-taking at the Group of 20 summit.

Bomb-detecting robots will be on hand, along with a drone for crowd surveillance, as President Xi Jinping, US President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin join other leaders from the world's richest nations in Australia's third-largest city.

The operation, involving 6,000 police and 1,900 troops, will be a high-visibility balancing act between protecting the world's most powerful leaders at a time of heightened terrorism fears, and showcasing what Australia hopes will be seen as its tolerance of political dissent.

The G20 meeting in Toronto four years ago is considered the summit's greatest public relations disaster, with more than 1,100 protesters arrested in a week amid reports of police brutality.

"Wherever there's been a major event, we've taken those lessons and we've implemented what we think should be in our plans from those lessons, particularly what happened in Toronto," said Katarina Carroll, Queensland's assistant police commissioner and head of G20 security. "Police officers know that it's everyone's right to protest."

Police have spent two years talking to protest groups, from climate change campaigners to those angry about the suspected shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine. There are 27 groups authorized to protest at designated areas near the summit venue.

Special G20 laws make it an offense to carry more than 50 ordinarily innocuous items in designated parts of the city, including surfboards, frozen eggs, reptiles and toy cars, since they can be used as weapons.

High alert

Three courts will be on call 24 hours a day so that potentially high numbers of arrested protesters can apply for bail quickly.

In September, Australia raised its terror threat level to "high" for the first time, due to what it said was the risk of attacks on the public by domestic militants.

Officials said then they had detected no specific threats relating to the G20, but security at Australia's Parliament was tightened after a gunman in Canda killed a guard and then stormed the country's parliament last month before he was shot dead.

Troops from an Australian commando unit have spent weeks before the this weekend's summit rehearsing counterterrorism strikes on key buildings using Black Hawk helicopters, armored vehicles and rifles with night vision sights.

(China Daily 11/14/2014 page11)