Olympics : Hardly the Gay Games

The wave of intimidation and repression in China prior to the Olympics is hitting homosexuals, too. According to an e-mail from Dr. Wan Yanhai, the most prominent gay-rights and AIDS activist in China, a number of raids took place in March in both Beijing and Shanghai. Wan believes that Chinese authorities are cracking down on the gay community “at a national level”.

Dr. Wan Yanhai isn’t just anybody. A former employee of the Ministry of Public Health, he lost his job in 1994 because of his participation in AIDS information campaigns and his support for equal rights for gay men and women. After he was laid off from the ministry, Wan Yanhai founded the AIDS-prevention organization Aizhixing Action Project (the Chinese characters for “Aizhixing” symbolize love, knowledge and action, and make a play on the word AIDS). The organization is also active in the struggle for freedom of speech on the Internet.

Arrested in 2002 for having released an internal report to his ministry about the Chinese contaminated-blood scandal (nearly one million people were contaminated with HIV in 23 of the 30 Chinese provinces), Wan Yanhai was only freed a month later after a worldwide campaign protesting his arrest. In 2006, he was arrested again, for having accused the government of having “gone to sleep” about AIDS in China. At the same time, an AIDS conference he had organized, which delegates from AIDS-prevention organizations and foundations from the world over were planning to attend, was suddenly cancelled by government order, despite Wan’s being a recognized AIDS and human-rights activist and the recipient of an award from the international watchdog organization Human Rights Watch.

Incessant Raids

In his e-mail, Wan Yanhai describes certain police actions in detail. It all started on March 9, 2008, with a raid on “Destination,” the most popular gay club in Beijing. The authorities said the discotheque was “overcrowded” and ordered its closure for several days. According to other information obtained in Beijing by Bakchich, the police evacuated all non-Asians from the club before they arrested anyone, in order to prevent influential foreigners or diplomats from being able to testify about the police action.

On March 17, armed policemen and officers of the Bureau of Public Safety raided Dongdan Park in Beijing’s eastern sector, a well-known gay pick-up spot. According to Wan Yanhai, the police “brought gays into the police station inside the park, where at least 40 or more people had to wait their turn to be interrogated. They all had to show I.D. They were then forced to write their names on a piece of paper and hold the paper up to their chests while they had their pictures taken. Those who were reluctance to obey were held back for more extended interrogations. A volunteer from the Aizhixing Action Project was among them. The police said they couldn’t find his name in their computerized files, and it took the Aizhixing Action Project’s lawyers efforts to have him freed.

The police used a murder committed in the park a few days earlier as an excuse for this collective arrest. But none of those arrested was questioned about the circumstances of the murder ! In the days following the raid, the police continued to patrol the area and to check I.D.s. At the least excuse, they were brought into the station. In the afternoon of March 22, two young men were arrested just for entering the park.”

Gay bathhouses, chat rooms…Nothing escapes the Beijing police

A similar episode took place on March 20 at the Oasis, the biggest gay bathhouse in Beijing. According to Wan Yanhai, “more than 70 people, all clients or employees of the club, were arrested. After more than 30 hours of detention, the establishment’s clients were released, while the employees are still behind bars. At dawn on March 21, the police raided another Oasis bathhouse near Dongsishitiao Bridge. This time, the employees were all arrested. Since then, both bathhouses have been closed by police order. A gay bathhouse in another part of the city was also closed by the authorities, as well as one in Shanghai.”

In addition, according to the gay chat room Beijing Tongzhi (“tongzhi,” literally “comrades,” has been adopted by Chinese gays as a nickname they use amongst themselves), at least 80 “sex workers” have been arrested. According to the post, “over the past few days, Beijing has been cleaning out the city and cracking down on sex business. More than 80 sex workers are currently behind bars. But this site isn’t open to anyone with illegal intentions. We hope that everyone will work together to oppose this situation. Thank you for your cooperation !”

Wan Yanhai is not the only person providing evidence of police harassment of gays. According to the Chinese website Shanghai-ist, “a raid on the Beijing club “Destination” took place on the same night as one on the PinkHome in Shanghai, where several gays were arrested. So many repressive measures performed in such rapid succession against gay clubs and public spaces having been unheard of up until now in China, our alarm is all the more justified.”

It is true that the number of gay clubs, bars and bathhouses has mushroomed over the past few years, particularly since the change in status for homosexuals. In 1997, the term “hooliganism” was removed from the Chinese Criminal Code in relation to gays arrested for “soliciting” in public places (the usual charge against gays suspected of looking for hook ups.) Homosexual acts were decriminalized, and in April 2001, homosexuality was removed from the list of mental disorders.

Olympic Sweep

According to Bakchich’s source in Beijing, “the authorities began the ‘clean-up’ as a signal to the gay community that they should keep a low profile during the Games, since the government doesn’t appreciate anything that isn’t “normal” or “bien range.” Beijing wants to force everyone who doesn’t have the required internal residential passport to leave the cities. In addition, it is believed that the raids on clubs and bathhouses could be linked to corruption. New police commissioners were named in Beijing recently, and it’s not unusual for them to start by intimidating gay businesses by demanding “bakchich” (bribes) in order to be allowed to work in peace.”

Unfortunately, this wave of intimidation of Chinese gays hasn’t attracted any media attention yet. Nor did the arrest of Hu Jia, the dissident sentenced to three and a half years in prison on April 3, another well-known AIDS activist and close collaborator of Wan Yanhai. Not a single French paper : not Le Monde, Liberation, Le Figaro, France-Soir, or Le Nouvel Observateur, when they reported on Hu Jia’s sentencing, bothered to mention the fact that he is both the executive director of the Aizhixing Action Project founded by Wan Yanhai, and the founder of another AIDS-prevention organization, Love Source. (Between 2002 and 2005, Hu Jia spent several months a year in the "AIDS villages" in regions where poor peasants were victims of the contaminated-blood scandals in blood-transfusion centers. “A lot of people were dying,” he testified ; as a Buddhist, it was my responsibility to spend time with them to help relieve their suffering.”)

With Hu Jia rotting away in a prison cell, there’s good reason to worry about his friend Wan Yanhai as well.

Translated by Regan Kramer