China announces Olympics stability drive after riot

By Chris Buckley

BEIJING (Reuters) – China has launched a nationwidecampaign to defuse protest ahead of the Beijing Olympic Games,state media reported on Monday, days after a riot in thecountry’s southwest highlighted volatile social strains.

With authorities eager to present China as a harmoniousnation during the August Games, the government has orderedlocal officials to defuse petition campaigns by discontentedcitizens and to prevent “mass incidents”, such as riots anddemonstrations, according to the news reports.

“The Beijing Olympics are approaching and properly carryingout petition and stability work, protecting social harmony andstability, and ensuring the Beijing Olympics go safely andsmoothly has become a tough battle that every department atevery level must win,” said one report of a nationwide videoconference on a stability drive that was held on Saturday.

“Now we are entering a state of war,” said the report on alocal government website in the eastern province of Zhejiang(http://www.dqnews.com.cn).

Yet at the very time officials were making plans forprotest-free Games, a county in the southwest province ofGuizhou was shaken by rioting over claimed police and officialabuses.

Thousands of locals mobbed government offices in Weng’ancounty, Guizhou. The local police headquarters was torched andpolice vehicles wrecked after claims spread that authoritieshad covered up a teenage girl’s death.

PETITION CAMPAIGNS

Saturday’s stability meeting was the latest of a flurry ofsecurity measures that China is taking to prevent any domesticunrest upsetting the Games and was targeted at petitioncampaigns by farmers and other disgruntled citizens.

Petitioners often pressure local officials by journeying toprovincial capitals or the national capital with complaintsabout lost land and corruption.

Over the past decade, the number of petitioners journeyingto provincial capitals and to Beijing has swollen. Nationwide,petitions and complaint visits grew from 4.8 million in 1995 to12.7 million in 2005.

“Our most fundamental demand that is that zero go toBeijing, zero go to the province capital and there are zeromass petitions and mass incidents,” a county official in thesouthwest province of Sichuan said, according to a localofficial website (http://www.scpc.gov.cn).

Guaranteeing security is the top priority of the BeijingOlympics, Chinese President Hu Jintao has said.

Another account of Saturday’s meeting appeared in the TibetDaily, where a vice chairman of the regional government, BaimaChilin, told officials to prevent more protests in the restivemountain area where anti-Chinese riots erupted in March.

Baima said the meeting had “made arrangements for creatinga harmonious and stable social environment for a successfulBeijing Olympic Games”.

In Weng’an county, locals contacted on Monday morning saidthe protest had melted away, but the county town remained tensewith heavy police patrols and broadcasts warning rioters toturn themselves in.

More than 300 people had been arrested following the riots,the Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, a HongKong-based group, said in a statement received by fax onMonday.

Cui Yadong, Guizhou public security chief, told state mediathat “14 lawbreakers” had been detained on Saturday night,Xinhua news agency said.

Police had said the teenage girl had killed herself byjumping in a river, but residents said the girl had been rapedand murdered by a relative of a senior government official.

The provincial government had re-opened the girl’s case,and set up a team of 10 criminal investigators and forensicexperts to probe the cause of death, Xinhua said.

“The police certainly won’t let the arson go unpunished.They will catch the criminals,” said a Weng’an businessmancontacted by telephone. He gave only his surname, Liu.

Source: http://www.ecodiario.es/