Chinese Police Try To Disband Artist’s Community

Police who tried for months to disband an artists’ community near the ruins of the old Summer Palace descended on it Thursday and ordered the 50 residents to leave.

Artists said they argued with more than 20 police and had the eviction deadline delayed until Wednesday.

Police have been trying to force the community to disband since before June 4, the sixth anniversary of the military slaughter of pro-democracy demonstrators near Tiananmen Square.

Police have given various reasons for the eviction, including saying the neighborhood will become part of the park that surrounds the ruins, the artists said.

The government, however, may view the liberal lifestyles of its inhabitants as a potential threat. For 40 years, the government has treated harshly artists who did not follow Communist Party dictates.

No one was arrested Thursday, but a young woman who took pictures of the raid said police confiscated her film and demanded her name. Artists, who refused to be identified, said police photographed them.

“They spoke to us like Hitler,” one artist said, stretching his arm out perpendicular to his body. “They said, ‘You must leave by the 25th.”’

The artists said they did not know whether what they would do next Wednesday when the police came back.