It was not immediately possible to verify the authenticity of the document released by the Free China Movement, a Washington-based group that opposed Beijing's selection last July to host the 2008 Summer Games.
"This is a smoking gun," another lobbying group, the Stamford, Conn.-based China Support Network, said in a statement. "In the light of today's information, if the (International Olympic Committee) has a shred of humanity, it will deny China the opportunity to host these games."
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.
The Free China Movement faxed a photocopy to reporters in Beijing. The one-page order bore the hallmarks of a government document, including two official-looking stamps and language typical of police notices.
"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 gatherings, assemblies and other activities that disrupt public order, the following special notification is given," it read.
The document was directed to all police bureaus and courts in Jilin and said it came from the north-eastern province's police headquarters and top court. Jilin, about 500 miles northeast of Beijing, has been a stronghold of Falun Gong, the exercise and meditation movement that China's communist leaders banned in July 1999 as a threat to their rule. [..]Other north-eastern provinces were wracked by protests by laid-off workers this March.
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, or $1,200 more than many urban Chinese earn in a year. 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 practitioners 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," the order said.
The notice's issue date was unclear. But it ordered the campaign to last from May 20, 2000 13 months after Beijing formally submitted its bid to the International Olympic Committee 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.
This week, the head of an International Olympic Committee inspection team, Hein Verbruggen, visited Beijing and declared himself fully satisfied with its preparations so far. A senior Beijing Olympic organizing official, Wang Wei, expressed doubt about the document's authenticity but said he could not comment. "I don't know the facts," he said Thursday. Jilin police said they had no information about the notice.
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."
http://www.boston.com/dailynews/122/sports/Chinese_democracy_campaigners_:.shtml
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