BEIJING/SHANGHAI: Police dispersed scores of people who gathered in central Beijing Sunday after calls spread online across China urging pro-democracy gatherings. In the end, the small gatherings in Beijing and Shanghai turned out to be demonstrations of the Chinese authorities' determination to snuff out even tepid challenges to Communist Party's power. On Beijing's Wangfujing shopping street, about 100 people stood in front of a McDonald's restaurant, slated to be the site of the protests, according to an Internet message that spread on Saturday urging gatherings in 13 cities. “I'm trying to do something for my country, to show my power,” said a young university student in Beijing, when asked why he turned up outside McDonald's. The crowd, including quite a few curious onlookers, was confronted by police officers who pushed them away, shouting “move off, move off, don't look anymore.” No one was arrested. One man said he got into a scuffle with the police after he picked up some flowers from the ground. “I had just been visiting the Forbidden City as a tourist and I passed by here and then these people took me away,” said the man, who was wearing a grey coat, black cap and black glasses. “Why would they take me away? I was just a passer-by,” said the man, who declined to be named. “What democracy is there?” In Beijing and Shanghai, police cars and vans flanked the streets where the gatherings were supposed to take place. Teams of police and plainclothes officers shuffled crowds along. In downtown Shanghai, three men who appeared to be in their 20s were taken to the police station near the Shanghai Peace Cinema after an altercation with police. Two elderly people said they came to the venue to protest the country's corrupt legal system and police brutality. “We protest the unfairness of our legal system. They just arrest anyone indiscriminately and even beat them up,” said an elderly woman, who said she was angry about the government's seizure of her home in 1996. “What human rights do these people have? None at all. We don't even have the right to walk. We don't even have the right to talk,” added another unidentified elderly man. The overseas Chinese “Boxun” website (www.peacehall.com) that spread word of the gatherings called for people to chant “we want food, we want work, we want housing, we want fairness”.
