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Olympic evictions

• James Reynolds
• 19 Jul 08, 10:05 AM GMT

China's spent about $40bn to make Beijing a more modern city for the Olympic Games. Visitors are meant to be dazzled by the skyscrapers, the new subway lines, and even the newly-planted rows of flowers by the side of the road (especially grown so that they bloom in August, during the Olympics.)

But the Geneva-based says that Beijing's modernisation effort have come at a cost. The Centre charges that 1.5 million people in this city have been evicted from their homes since 2000 in the effort to modernise China's capital. The government in Beijing disputes these figures. It also insists that all evictions have been carried out in accordance with the law and that everyone who's been moved has been offered proper compensation.

On Friday, from a street in central Beijing.

Officials had to be very careful with the way they handled the case - this summer, the world's attention is on Beijing. So, for several days, the Yu family was allowed to speak to the press and to campaign openly for more compensation (the police watched from a van parked across the road - but they didn't try to stop the Yus from talking.) When I met Yu Pingjiu a few days ago, she told me that she wasn't scared at all. Finally, she and her family were evicted in the middle of the night - the only time, this summer, when no one was watching. That's how an eviction happens under the Olympic spotlight - it's careful and considered.

But is what can happen when local officials outside Beijing don't have to worry about Olympic attention (warning -this footage shows violence.)

This footage was filmed in May in a village in the eastern province of Shandong and then posted on the Internet. In case you can't download it, it shows the violent eviction of people from their homes - to make way for apartment blocks. One man, in a red shirt, is on the roof of his family's home. He's punched and kicked in the head. He's taken to hospital, barely conscious.

We've just been to the village in Shandong to find out more. We tracked down the man in the red shirt - his name is Zheng Chengxing. He's still in hospital - his face is still swollen from the kicks and punches he received almost two months ago. He allowed us to film him, but was too scared to be interviewed.

We also went to the remains of the home that he was defending. We knocked on his neighbours' door. They opened a small hatch - but were too nervous to open the door. Their house is also set to be demolished.

"Of course, we're scared," the woman inside told us.

Not every eviction in China is violent. But, outside Beijing, there is no Olympic protection.

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