President of Sweden's Olympic Committee (SOC) Stefan Lindeberg has expressed his opposition to attempts at disrupting the Olympic torch relay through violence, the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheder (Daily News) reported on Sunday.

The recent protests against the torch relay along its route can do nothing to harm the Olympic Games or the Olympic ideals but only bring damage to the protesters themselves, Lindeberg said during an interview with the newspaper on the sidelines of an International Olympic Committee meeting in Beijing.

Lindeberg said some people proclaim that they fight for democracy, but when they resort to violence to disrupt the torch relay, they can only end up being harmed by their own schemes.

(Xinhua News Agency April 14, 2008)