Police drag protesters from rights exhibition
It was billed as a landmark event to showcase the central government's 'efforts and determination' to protect people's rights, but yesterday four people were arrested for protesting outside the country's first human rights exhibition in Beijing.
'China has no human rights,' one man shouted as he was led away by a plain-clothes officer and bundled roughly onto an empty bus waiting on the pavement outside the museum.
Three other people, one a woman of more than 50, were also forced onto the bus, which remained stationary to accommodate further involuntary passengers. Fifty metres along the pavement, an empty bus appeared to provide back-up.
A uniformed policeman explained that the most vocal petitioner was from Shandong province and was protesting against seizure of his land by local officials.
'But there are official channels he can go through in Beijing for those kinds of complaints. He is just using this exhibition as an excuse,' the policeman said.
Organisers said the aim of the 10-day exhibition was to 'enable people to get a clearer picture of human rights conditions in China', according to Xinhua.
But security arrangements outside the exhibition were hardly conducive to public participation.
More than 20 plain-clothes personnel milled around the entrance gate, which was flanked by two teams of security guards. Some residents were reported to have been refused admission and foreigners were asked if they were journalists.
Inside, a handful of visitors wandered through three cavernous halls of photographs on how the rights of ethnic minority groups, the disabled and migrant workers were being protected. Local government corruption and land seizures were not mentioned, and the only reference to the Cultural Revolution was that it was a 'serious mistake and a setback'.
The exhibition is viewed as a response to international pressure to improve its human rights record.
