BEIJING - Two Chinese women in their 70s who applied to hold a protest during the Olympic Games were ordered to spend a year in a labor camp, a relative said Wednesday, as more foreign activists were detained.
Wu Dianyuan, 79, and her neighbor Wang Xiuying, 77, were notified Sunday that they were to serve a yearlong term of re-education through labor, said Wang's son, Li Xuehui. Officials did not specify a reason and still had not acted on the order, he said.
Instead, the pair were under the observation of a neighborhood watch group and it was unclear if they would be sent to prison, he said.
"Wang Xiuying is almost blind and disabled. What sort of re-education through labor can she serve?" Li said in a telephone interview. "But they can also be taken away at any time."
The order followed the pair's repeated attempts to apply for permission to protest their forced eviction from their homes. China agreed to allow demonstrations in three designated areas during the games, which end Sunday. So far, there have been no protests in any of the official areas.
The re-education system, in place since 1957, allows police to sidestep the need for a criminal trial or a formal charge and send people to prison for up to four years to perform penal labor.
Critics say the system is often used to detain political or religious activists, and violates suspects' rights.
The Public Security Bureau had no immediate comment. A spokeswoman for the Beijing bureau that oversees re-education through labor said, "We have no records of these two names in our system."
Beijing has pointed to the special zones