The Associated Press (AP) reports that according to a document released by U.S.-based Chinese democracy activists who say it comes from the highest levels of China’s government, police in northeastern China have been told to prepare for the 2008 Olympics by suppressing protests and targeting followers of the Falun Gong movement.
Although it was not immediately possible to verify the document’s authenticity, Andrew Nathan, a China scholar at Columbia University who examined it, said, “I think the document is authentic and I think it’s significant”. The notice appeared to sanction the arrest of Falun Gong practitioners even without formal warrants, reports AP.
The document read, “in order to better welcome the smooth holding of the 2008 Olympic Games in our country, to stabilize social order, and to severely strike at illegal gathering, assemblies and other activities that disrupt public order, the following special notification is given”.
The notice ordered that organizers of large protests and gatherings “who refuse to mend their ways” be sentenced to up to three years’ imprisonment and fined 10,000 yuan, ($1,200).
Participants in gatherings of three people or more, who ignore police warnings should be detained for up to 15 days and fined the equivalent of $120, the notice decreed. Leaders of “illegal organizations”, it added without defining such groups, “should be punished severely”.
“Falun Gong practioners and instigators should be cracked down upon to a greater degree. As soon as they are discovered, they should first be arrested and then the formalities be dealt with”, said the order.
The date of the notice was unclear, but it ordered the campaign to last from May 20, 2000 – 13 months after Beijing formally submitted its bid to the IOC but before it was selected – until Dec. 30, 2007.
The Free China Movement said it released the document to coincide with the visit of China’s vice president and expected future leader, Hu Jintao, to the United States.
The notice said it was issued in accordance with regulations from China’s Ministry of Public Security, the national police headquarters, and Supreme People’s Court. Timothy Cooper, the Free China Movement’s international director, said that indicates the document is “a decree from the highest levels of government”.
Meanwhile, in anticipation of the Games, and China’s entry into the World Trade Organization, Straits Times reports that large groups of well-heeled nouveaux-riche from China’s coastal cities are going on home-buying sprees in Beijing, the site of some of the country’s highest real-estate prices.
More than 30 per cent of the city’s recent offerings have been snapped up by outsiders said property agents.
Property buyers are expecting high returns from their investments in the years to come.
