MANY Chinese people rallied Saturday in Paris, London, Manchester, Berlin and Los Angeles in support of the Beijing Olympic Games and against biased media coverage of the Olympic torch relay and unrest in Tibet.

In Los Angeles, police said up to 5,000 people gathered outside the Hollywood offices of broadcaster CNN in protest against one of the channel’s commentators, Jack Cafferty, who called the Chinese “goons and thugs” in a program aired April 9.

They demanded an apology from Cafferty and his removal from the network.

The channel said Tuesday that Cafferty was offering his “strongly held” opinion of the Chinese Government, not China’s people. The remarks added to the anger felt by Chinese worldwide following protests during the Olympic torch relay.

During Saturday’s protest, the crowd waved Chinese and American flags, sang songs and chanted “CNN! Liar!”

Los Angeles police said the rally, which ended about noon local time, was peaceful.

A letter taped to a door of the CNN bureau demanded that Cafferty “openly apologize” and be removed from the air permanently, calling the demonstration “only our first step.”

“If our demands are not taken seriously, we shall unite more public support to fight against such racial prejudice,” said the letter, signed “All the Chinese of the southwestern United States.”

A second letter slid under the bureau’s door criticized CNN’s coverage of unrest in Tibet.

In Paris on Saturday, nearly 10,000 Chinese gathered in the Place de la Republique square wearing T-shirts daubed with the slogan “One China, One family” and brandishing signs critical of the Western media.

The rally was the biggest ever staged by overseas Chinese in France in nearly 20 years, organizers said.

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The protesters, who came from across France, unfurled a banner showing handicapped Chinese athletes who carried the torch during the chaotic relay through Paris last week, as they chanted “Beijing Olympic Games!” and “Go Peking!”

Chinese flags floated beneath heavy clouds along with a blue-white-and-red one symbolizing French-Chinese friendship.

“We’re demonstrating against the misinformation in the French and Western media, to promote the Olympic Games and to construct a bridge between the French and Chinese people -- and not a wall as the media do,” said one of the rally’s spokesmen, Thierry Liu.

Several French also joined the Paris rally including Joseph, 60, who said he travelled often to China and that he was “defending the right to the truth.”

More than 1,000 people, mainly students, also gathered outside the BBC’s offices in Manchester, northwestern England, while around 300 staged a demonstration outside the Houses of Parliament in London.

Several hundred Chinese also demonstrated in Berlin’s Potsdamer Platz in the business district gripping banners with messages like “Media = untruths,” and “China Olympia, one world, one dream.”

The protests came more than a week after torch relays in Paris and London were disrupted by Tibetan separatists.

The marred European legs of the torch relay have prompted ordinary Chinese to call for boycotts of European products, including the French supermarket chain Carrefour.

Protests against Carrefour and France took place in five Chinese towns Saturday.(SD-Agencies)

A Frenchman holds a red flag during a peaceful demonstration at the Place de la Republique square in Paris, France, on Saturday.Xinhua