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Nepalese police detain a Tibetan protester near the Chinese consulate in Katmandu. Photograph: Binod Joshi/AP
Human rights campaigners scaled up anti-China protests today with demonstrations around the world and an unauthorised broadcast from inside Beijing as the Olympic opening ceremony began.
While a heavy police presence ensured the streets of the host city remained calm, Chinese authorities were unable to stop the pirate radio transmission by media group Reporters Without Borders in the capital.
Using transmitters and a homemade antenna, the message, broadcast in Mandarin, English and French, urged the government to relax state control of the media and called for the release of imprisoned journalists.
Meanwhile, large protests were held in cities including London, Hong Kong, Delhi and Kathmandu.
In London, around 200 protesters converged on the Chinese Embassy in Portland Place, shouting anti-China slogans and waving "Free Tibet" placards.
Demonstrators from Tibet, Zimbabwe, Sudan and Burma joined forces to protest against human rights violations and China's hosting of the Olympics.
Beating drums and chanting, the group unfurled banners attacking China for supporting the Burmese regime while another flag read "End murder, rape and torture in Zimbabwe".
In a small side-street away from the main protest, pro-China demonstrators in smart suits held a smaller, more muted gathering in support of the games, waving Chinese and British flags.
In Delhi as many as 3,000 Tibetan monks and refugees shouting anti-Chinese slogans clashed with police as they braved heavy rains to protest next to India's parliament.
Hundreds of protesters dressed in yellow and green "Free Tibet" T-shirts stamped on posters of the Chinese president, Hu Jintao.
In Dharamsala, the seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile in India, 3,000 Tibetan monks and exiles took to the streets, demanding an end to Beijing rule in their homeland.
In the Nepalese capital, Kathmandu, more than 1,300 Tibetans, including nuns and monks, shouted and wept as they marched on the Chinese consulate.
Protesters chanted "China out of Tibet" and "Stop cultural genocide". Many wore red and blue ribbons emblazoned with "Free Tibet" around their heads.
Police said they detained more than 400 people, many of them women, but that they were likely be freed later in the day.
And in Hong Kong, Matt Pearce, from Bristol, England, hung two banners on road signs on the Tsing Ma bridge. The banners read "We want human rights and democracy" and "The people of China want freedom from oppression".
Officials shut down traffic on the bridge's upper deck where Pearce was protesting. Television footage showed Pearce wearing a horse's head mask and a white shirt bearing the Olympic rings, while carrying a guitar. His protest ended after about an hour when men in plain clothes bustled him away.
Hong Kong police said in a statement that officers arrested Pearce for causing a public nuisance and he was being held for questioning.
A Hong Kong pro-democracy legislator, Emily Lau, and a Hong Kong group critical of China's brutal crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in June 1989 were expected to protest later near the Olympic equestrian venue.
Olympic organisers moved the equestrian event from Beijing to the former British colony of Hong Kong because of a rash of equine diseases and substandard quarantine procedures on the mainland.
The Beijing games have become a focus for activists critical of China on issues ranging from its human rights record and heavy-handed rule in Tibet to its abortion policies and repression of the Falun Gong spiritual movement.
Beijing considers the games - which cost billions of dollars and took seven years to prepare - a huge source of national pride, and is desperate to ensure they go smoothly.