China's discontented challenge Olympic hurdles

By Chris Buckley

BEIJING (Reuters) - Add one more contest to the spectacles on show during the Beijing Olympic Games -- the national protest hurdle.

With China's leaders demanding that none of the nation's simmering unrest upset the Games, officials have launched an onslaught of checks to stop aggrieved citizens reaching Beijing.

On Sunday, 19 days before the Games open on August 8, that crackdown intensified with even tighter checks on travelers coming to the capital. But while these "petitioners" may be outmatched by the rings of police at rail and bus stations and government offices, the contest is not all one-sided.

Many citizens nursing well-thumbed files filled with grievances have defied the security barriers and warnings in the hope of winning attention for their woes at this sensitive time.

On Sunday, dozens gathered near official petitions reception offices in Beijing's south, yelling out claims of police torture, lawless land grabs, and court corruption. Many said they expect to be thrown out or detained in coming days.

"They take away hundreds of us every day," said a farmer from Zhejiang province in eastern China, only giving his surname, Ma. "We're waiting to see who can tough it out for the longest."

Others are biding their time in rented village huts and makeshift shelters on the city's outskirts, avoiding police watching the petitions offices, and waiting for the Games.

"It's like guerrillas. We've scattered to the hills and countryside," said one of them, Yu Zhonghuan, a soft spoken man from Shanghai who for years has pressed for compensation for a demolished apartment.

"We thought the Olympic Games would be an opportunity to resolve our problems. It's not turning out that way, but this is our big chance."

The Games have borne hopes, sometimes encouraged by Chinese officials, that they will nudge the one-party state to become more relaxed and liberal.

But the campaign against peaceful if pesky petitioners suggests the Games have been used to hone and brandish methods of political control the Party considers essential to its survival. "This has revitalized the instruments of social control," Nicholas Bequelin, a researcher for the advocacy group Human Rights Watch in Hong Kong, said of the pre-Games crackdown.

"This is a step back from a society shaking free of control and arbitrary power."

RAGGED PILGRIMS

The ragged farmers and small-town residents who risk this pilgrimage of discontent to the Chinese capital stand out too much among the shining, cleaned cityscape to have much hope of making it near Tiananmen Square or other high-profile sites.

Visiting state "petitions and visits" offices in provincial capitals and Beijing has for decades offered a rare channel for ordinary people to vent complaints. The roots of the system reach back to ancient times, when subjects could petition the emperor and his officials.