Beijing welcomes world but not its own ethnic minorities

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BEIJING -- With their infant daughter in their arms, Nuer and Guli visited a dozen hotels in Beijing in late May, searching desperately for a place to stay.Most of the hotel clerks, mistaking them for foreigners, welcomed them and offered a room. But when the couple pulled out their identity cards, the clerks realized they were Muslim Uighurs from China. And then the response was always the same: Sorry, no room at the inn.Turned away by every hotel, the family rented an old car for $20 a day and slept in it for two nights. The conditions were so poor that their two-month-old baby became sick. Finally, they abandoned the car and begged to stay at a cousin's overcrowded apartment.Today the couple, whose surnames are being withheld because they are nervous about repercussions if they are identified, has given up. They are packing their bags and getting ready to leave Beijing this month, joining the thousands of other Uighurs, Tibetans and Mongolians who are fleeing under police pressure in the final weeks before the Olympics.Ethnic minorities, migrant workers, petitioners and social activists are among the key targets of the Chinese security crackdown that has swept through Beijing in recent months. Now, with the Olympics just three weeks away, many of the targeted groups are making their final preparations to leave.Tibetans and Mongolians are under pressure to leave Beijing because they are seen as potential Olympic troublemakers because of their desire for greater autonomy and religious freedom for their regions of China.The Uighurs are under greater pressure than any other ethnic minority because the government sees them not only as potential protesters but also as potential terrorists, even though only a tiny fraction have been involved in radical or separatist activities.Until recently, Beijing was home to dozens of Uighur restaurants, specializing in the popular grilled food of their Muslim homeland, Xinjiang, in the remote northwest of China. But most have been forced to close over the past two years as the security clampdown has tightened.Nuer, who has worked in restaurants in Beijing for most of the past 15 years, estimates that 4,000 to 5,000 Uighurs have been detained or expelled from Beijing as the city prepares for the Olympics. His estimate is impossible to verify, but a recent survey confirmed that many Beijing hotels are refusing to rent rooms to Uighurs.Nuer started his own restaurant in 2005, employing a half-dozen Uighurs to prepare Xinjiang-style food. But last year, he said, the police ordered him to shut down the restaurant and send all of his employees back to Xinjiang because of the approaching Olympics.Nuer himself has been detained five times by the police in the past two years. "They never explain why they are taking me to the police station. They search me and then they release me without filing any charges against me."E-mail Geoffrey York of the Toronto Globe and Mail at gyork(at)globeandmail.com(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)