[WATCH] Beijing: hundreds protest over migrant crackdown

Hundreds of protestors have taken to the streets of Beijing, China to pillory Beijing’s crackdown on migrant communities with chants of “violent evictions violate human rights.”

People gathered on the streets of Feijia village, around 12 miles northeast of Tiananmen Square on Sunday for the rare rally, condemning the demolition and eviction campaign.

According to activists, thousands of migrant workers were forced from their homes in Beijing’s run-down periphery since November, when authorities made it their mission to drive ‘low end’ migrant workers out of the city, in the wake of a tenement fire.

Sunday’s protest was not reported in the Communist party controlled press, but images and footage of the event spread on social media.

“The ‘low population’ is hitting back,” tweeted Yaxue Cao, editor of ChinaChange.org, an English language human rights site.

Footage showed crowds walking through the community. One group carried a white banner with the phrase “Baoli qugan qinfan renquan” – forced evictions violate human rights.

A Cornell University, Eli Friedman, who studies China’s labour movement, said the protest was the first since Beijing’s recent crackdown started.

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— 即管笑 (@xwh3ab) December 10, 2017

The demonstration suggested that the city may have underestimated how much anger would be caused by the campaign, which once saw vibrant migrant communities reduced to rubble.

Freidman predicted that authorities would now move swiftly to ensure that the protest as ended quickly.

“They have a very well-developed apparatus for responding [to this kind of protest] ... They do some divide and conquer [among protest leaders], they make some compromises, they pay a few people off … they might arrest a few people or sometimes even beat a few people up… But usually their repression is pretty targeted - they don’t do mass arrests in most cases - and they make the problem go away.”

Friedman said it was certain that the protests would not be allowed to spread - particularly if they appeared to be contaminating “potentially politically explosive groups” such as students or the middle class. Even so, Chinese president Xi Jinping’s attempts to project himself as an all-powerful champion of China’s poor were likely to be undermined by the mass evictions.

During visits to affected communities last week, several victims of the crackdown directly - and unusually - pointed the finger of blame at Xi. “I think what is happening is that ... Xi Jinping has water in his head,” said a migrant from Anhui province.

Friedman said: “Given the scale people know that there is no way that [Beijing Communist party chief] Cai Qi or anyone in the Beijing municipal government would do something on this level without the approval of Xi Jinping.”

“It’s clearly been a terrible PR exercise.”