Beijing announces pre-Olympic social clean up

Jonathan Watts in Beijing
Wednesday January 23, 2008

Guardian Unlimited
Beijing’s Olympic chief has ordered a social cleansing operation to clear the city of beggars, hawkers and prostitutes before the start of the event in August.

The planned relocation of “problem” residents and businesses is aimed at creating a salubrious image of the Chinese capital in time for the arrival of an estimated half a million tourists, athletes and journalists.

Among the targets will be homeless people, unregistered taxi drivers, mobile snack vendors and fronts for prostitution, such as hairdressing salons and karaoke parlours.

Amid fears of human rights abuses, Liu Qi, the head of the Beijing Olympic Organising Committee, said police should exercise restraint in carrying out the clean-up orders.

“The problems of vagrants, beggars and unlicensed businesses must be solved before the Olympics,” he was quoted as saying in today’s Beijing News. “But in enforcing the law, [officers] must be civilised, they must explain their actions and be reasonable. They must not create social environment problems.”

The authorities previously announced plans to put migrant beggars and hawkers in special holding centres that will be expanded ahead of the Olympics. Such “undesirables” are kept at these facilities before being forcibly sent home.

Beijing is not the first host city to adopt such measures. Ahead of the last games in Athens, 2,700 Roma were reportedly evicted. Last year, a study by the UK’s Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions found that more than 2m people have been driven from their homes since 1988 to make way for the Olympics.

But the concerns are particularly great in China, where the authorities often used brutal tactics to clear people from their homes and stifle opposition.

Several petitioners and human rights advocates have been arrested in recent months in an apparent attempt to silence the government’s most outspoken critics ahead of the arrival of an estimated 30,000 foreign journalists.

Among the most prominent is Hu Jia, the Aids campaigner, who has not been seen since he was taken by police at the end of December. His wife Zeng Jinyan, and their newborn baby are under house arrest.

The heavy handed tactics cast a shadow on the positive image that China wants to project during the Games. Compared to the past, millions of people enjoy greater personal freedom and affluence.