PARIS, August 8, 2008 (AFP) - Several hundred human rights activists rallied outside the Chinese embassy in Paris on Friday to mark the start of the Beijing Olympics after a court overturned a police ban on demonstrations.

Marching behind a banner depicting the five Olympic rings as handcuffs, some 200 supporters of media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) walked from Champs Elysees avenue to the Chinese embassy.

They were joined by 200 to 300 human rights activists and pro-Tibetan demonstrators who had staged a separate rally near the Eiffel Tower, carrying five coffins and banners calling for 'Freedom for Tibet'.

A small group of Uighur Muslims also joined in the rally, along with a handful of demonstrators from Myanmar.

Paris police issued a last-minute ban on gatherings at the embassy to prevent a repeat of 'violent disturbances' that broke out when the Olympic flame passed through Paris, but RSF successfully had the ban overturned in court Friday morning.

Police briefly blocked the demonstrators from marching on the Chinese embassy, but they were finally allowed through.

'We have managed to demonstrate outside the Chinese embassy. It is 20 metres (yards) away,' said RSF head Robert Menard.

Menard said the court ruling was a 'slap' for the French authorities which he said 'took a political decision to stop us from demonstrating.'

Similar rallies were allowed to go ahead in six other European countries, according to RSF.

The Paris-based watchdog Friday took over a frequency on China's tightly-controlled airwaves for 20 minutes in a symbolic protest calling for free speech just hours before the start of the Beijing Olympics.

The group said it was the first protest of its kind in China since the Communist Party took power in 1949.

Sarkozy is seeking to use his 12-hour visit to Beijing to mend diplomatic and commercial ties frayed by the Olympic flame fiasco in April and by his initial threat to boycott the opening ceremony over Tibet.

Rowdy protests by activists angry at China's crackdown in Tibet seriously disrupted the flame's Paris leg, with images of the chaotic event provoking a wave of anti-French protests in China.