Examiner: Crackdown document worries Chinese chiefs

By Ted Anthony
Associated Press

BEIJING -- Telling police to "arrest them, then do the paperwork," China is girding for the 2008 Olympics by ordering a crackdown on Falun Gong and all other dissent in a northeastern province, according to a document that Chinese democracy activists say is an official decree.

It was not possible to independently verify the authenticity of the document released in the United States by the Free China Movement, a Washington-based group that opposed Beijing's selection to host the 2008 Summer Games.

The Free China Movement said the decree came from the highest levels of China's government. Andrew Nathan, a China scholar at Columbia University who co-edited "The Tiananmen Papers," about other Chinese government documents, said he believed the order was authentic.

The one-page order, directed to police bureaus and courts in Jilin, said it came from that northeastern province's police headquarters and top court. It appeared to sanction the arrest of Falun Gong practitioners even without formal warrants.

The Free China Movement faxed a photocopy of the document to reporters in Beijing.

Jilin, about 500 miles northeast of Beijing, has been a stronghold of Falun Gong, the exercise and meditation movement banned by China's communist leaders in 1999.[..] Other northeastern provinces were wracked by protests by laid-off workers this March.

The Connecticut-based China Support Network, a lobbying group, called the document "a smoking gun" -- and a problem for the International Olympic Committee.

"Do the executives there in fact sanction the abuse of human rights under the cheerfully applied seal of the Olympics?" it said in a statement. "If the IOC has a shred of humanity, it will deny China the opportunity to host these games."

A senior Beijing Olympic organizing official, Wang Wei, expressed doubt about the document's authenticity but said he could not comment. Jilin police said they had no information and asked why reporters were interested.

The IOC headquarters in Geneva was closed for the day but U.S. committee member Anita DeFrantz said she hadn't seen the document. She noted that Wang and other members of China's organizing committee were looking into the issue.

In the past, DeFrantz said, these reports "often don't pan out." However, she added that IOC President Jacques Rogge said last week that the committee would take action if it felt human rights issues were interfering with Beijing's ability to hold the Games.

Beijing pins great hopes on the 2008 Olympics as a showcase of China's progress and increasing international prestige, and high-profile protests would mar its efforts at shaping its world image.

The notice was not dated. But it ordered the campaign from May 20, 2000 -- 13 months after Beijing submitted its bid to the International Olympic Committee but before it was chosen -- until Dec. 30, 2007.

Nathan said the link to the Olympics could be peripheral, and perhaps was just a way of putting existing policy on paper. "It may be consistent with their view of the rule of law."

The Free China Movement said it released the document during the U.S. visit of China's vice president and expected future leader, Hu Jintao, who has defended Beijing's rights record during his trip.

It said the decree was obtained by the U.S.-based Committee for Investigation of Religious Persecution in China, which in February released scores of what China scholars said appeared to be genuine internal government documents.

On Wednesday, the head of an IOC inspection commission visited Beijing and declared himself fully satisfied with preparations. Hein Verbruggen sidestepped reporters' questions about China's rights practices.

The decree, titled "Notice on severely striking illegal organizations," bore two official-looking seals and said it was designed "to better welcome the smooth holding of the 2008 Olympic Games in our country" and "to stabilize social order."

The notice ordered that organizers of large protests "who refuse to mend their ways" be sentenced to up to three years' imprisonment and fined $1,200. Leaders of "illegal organizations," it added, "should be punished severely."

"Falun Gong practitioners and instigators should be cracked down upon to a greater degree," the order said. "First arrest them, then do the paperwork."

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