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Zhang Wei, a Beijing resident who wanted to publicize the demolition of her home, was detained during the Olympics/APWANGGANG, China-As this nation savors its historic haul of gold medals and grapples with a post-Olympics malaise, Gao Chuancai sits captive in a run-down hotel 700 miles from Beijing. One of the people detained during the Olympics was Gao Chuancai, a farmer who sought to denounce corruption in his village, at one of the official protest zones in Beijing.Guarded by three policemen, Mr. Gao, a 45-year-old farmer detained after he sought to demonstrate in one of the official Olympic protest zones, is serving an open-ended sentence for “suspected extortion,” according to the Harbin public security bureau, whose officers seized him two weeks ago in the Beijing bathhouse where he was sleeping.“I’m doing fine,” he shouted through a barred window as his son and two visitors approached on Wednesday. “They’re treating me well.”Even as he spoke, his smile not entirely convincing, guards who had been tugging at his waist and legs wrested him away from the window. Shouts and scuffling sounds followed from inside the room.In a country where petitioners and protesters are regularly jailed, the detention of Mr. Gao is not especially notable. At least 220,000 people are serving “re-education through labor” sentences — one- to three-year terms that are meted out by the police without trial — and scores of other dissidents live under house arrest or with the unceasing surveillance of the Public Security Bureau.But the decision to take Mr. Gao into custody reflected the extreme irritability to even minor protest actions that gripped China’s capital during the Olympics. Mr. Gao is also part of a cadre of tireless petitioners, many of them inured to harassment and disappointment, who tried to protest anyway.He was among at least a half-dozen people detained after they applied for legal permits to stage a demonstration in designated protest zones. The zones were established by the Chinese authorities, nominally to show their openness to divergent views during the Games. No protests ever took place in the zones.“Anything that could threaten social stability makes the government very nervous,” said Jia Ping, the director of China Global Fund Watch Initiative, an organization that advocates on behalf of people infected with H.I.V. Among those detained during the Games were Zhang Wei, a Beijing resident who was seeking to publicize the demolition of her home, and Ji Sizun, a democracy advocate whose foray to the protest application office ended with his disappearance into a large black car.Wu Dianyuan and Wang Xiuying, two elderly women whose requests to protest yielded one-year “re-education through labor” sentences, seem to have fared better. Human Rights in China, a rights watchdog group, reported on Friday that authorities in Beijing had formally rescinded the sentence imposed on the two women during the Games. Ms. Wu’s son, Li Xuehui, said the police also bought the family a new television set.Like Ms. Wu and Mrs. Wang, Mr. Gao is fearless, a man who seems to grow bolder with each detention.Here in Wanggang, the dusty agricultural town where he is lauded by many residents and loathed by the authorities, he has waged a decade-long campaign against officials he says routinely pocket money meant to compensate farmers whose land has been confiscated for public projects. Broken bones, smashed teeth and irreversible impotence, he said, are among the repercussions of his 12 detentions. “He is so stubborn,” said his sister, Gao Xiuzhi, 55. “Nothing will stop him, unless he is killed."Last May his wife died after drinking a bottle of pesticide at the local government office. Family members said she could not afford treatment for her breast cancer and thought a dramatic gesture might move officials to hand over some of the money they owed her.The police blamed Mr. Gao for her death, but the town rallied to his defense and the charges were eventually dropped.After her death, Mr. Gao became even more relentless.In recent years, he has taken on the cause of six rural towns whose farmland was overtaken by a new highway. “The government eats our meat, but that’s not enough — so they drink our blood and consume our bones,” said Huang Qihe, 43, a farmer.Last week, when Mr. Huang and his neighbors heard a rumor that Mr. Gao had been arrested in Beijing and shipped back to Wanggang, they marched to the police station and demanded to see him. They were told he was not there, so they came back again. And again.After a week, the police finally handed over the slip of paper officially acknowledging Mr. Gao’s detention and accusing him of extortion. Infuriated, Dong Mingying, 45, and about 20 of her neighbors have been showing up at the station every day or two and threatening to go to Beijing if Mr. Gao is not released. “I think we are making them nervous,” she said proudly.Reached at the Wanggang police station, an officer declined to comment on Mr. Gao’s case, saying it was being handled by the Nangang District Public Security Bureau. A man who answered the phone at the bureau insisted the matter was the responsibility of the Wanggang police.Mr. Gao’s 23-year-old son, Gao Jiaqing, is not especially proud of his father. When he was 12, his father sent him to another province so he would not be exposed to the constant chaos wrought by his endless wars with the authorities. “At this point I’m numb,” he said, sitting on a bed piled high with his father’s documents.Still he walks every day to the back of the crumbling hotel operated by the Wanggang Agricultural Cultivation Bureau where his father is being held and tries to cheer him up.On Wednesday, before he was yanked away from the window, Mr. Gao, whose thin face has grown even gaunter, managed to slip some scraps of paper to his son. On them, he provided details of his detention and the names of the officials who had ordered him locked up. At the bottom, in tiny characters, he wrote: “I didn’t ask for money. I just wanted justice.”
Tang Xuemei contributed research.
Tang Xuemei contributed research.
By ANDREW JACOBS
As in the days of Noah...
