McClatchy Washington Bureau

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BEIJING — Chinese authorities sentenced two elderly women this week to serve one-year terms in this country's labor re-education system for applying for a special protest permit the government had promised to grant during the Olympic Games, a relative told McClatchy Wednesday.

The sentences allowed Beijing residents Wu Dianyuan, 79, and Wang Xiuying, 77, to serve their time outside one of the country's 310 re-education-through-labor camps, but the two could be detained at any moment, said Wu's son Li Xuehei in a telephone interview.

Upset about being evicted from their homes in 2001, Wu and Wang had first applied on Aug. 5 for a permit to protest at one of three designated areas the Chinese government has set up for potential Olympic-era protesters, Li said.

The two women received no answer from Beijing's Municipal Security Administration Unit and returned four more times to press their cases, Li said.

On Sunday, Beijing officials handed the two women year-long sentences beginning this past July 30 for "disturbing the public order," Li said. When the two women went back a fifth time Monday to apply for a protest permit, city officials denied their application, saying they were ineligible because of the re-education labor sentence.

"They set the sentences for July 30 because they're trying to avoid the appearance that this has to do with the protest permit, but that's all that this is about," Li said. "This kind of pressure is wrong for sure."

Li added that Wang was nearly blind and wouldn't survive life in one of China's infamous labor camps. Police don't need a court order to send people to perform such labor for up to four years.

Contacted by McClatchy, an official with the Beijing security administration said he didn't know about the two women's' cases but would look into them. He didn't give a timeframe for when he might find the information

The administration announced this week that it had received 77 applications, including from three foreigners, for permission to use the designated protest areas, according to state media. All but three of the applications were eventually withdrawn because authorities ruled the disputes could be resolved with the help of government agencies.

The administration suspended two applications because they didn't follow the correct application procedures, the state report said. Another was rejected because it violated the country's laws, although the report didn't specify which laws.

At a Wednesday press conference, Wang Wei, executive vice president of the Beijing Olympics organizing committee, said Chinese authorities tried to resolve the issues raised by protesters before granting protest permits.

"The resolution of these protests were through dialogue and communication," Wang said. "This is the way we like to deal with things in Chinese culture. Chinese culture always emphasizes harmony."

Sharon Hom, executive director of the New York-based activist group Human Rights in China, said the Chinese government had never intended to allow protests during the Olympics even though it had promised to do so when it applied for the right to host the games.

"These new protest parks are really old wine in new bottles," Hom said. "You get two results: You either don't get permission or you're intimidated into withdrawing your application."

Speaking by telephone, Wu said she wouldn't back down even if it meant being dispatched to a labor camp. Wu and Wang were kicked out of their homes in central Beijing in 2001 to make way for a road widening, she said.

"They'll pressure me, but I'm not scared," Wu said. "There's just no way I'm going to stop speaking out."