BEIJING (AP) - Police harassed Chinese dissidents during President Bush's visit to Beijing, telling at least two not to leave home and staking out the hospital ward of a doctor who is a Christian activist.
While Bush urged China to embrace liberty and religious freedom in a speech broadcast nationwide on state television, former political prisoner Jin Cheng said Friday that police barred him from leaving his Beijing home.
``They blocked the door and said I couldn't leave,'' Jin said in a telephone interview. ``It's very tedious. We know Bush is here, but I think it's a bit excessive.''
Jin, a 43-year-old art designer, was imprisoned for 18 months in the early 1990s for publishing a human rights magazine. He said four officers visited Thursday evening and told him he could not leave his home during Bush's visit.
He said at least five officers in uniform or civilian clothes were stationed outside his residence on Friday and kept him from going to work or from buying lunch.
Xu Yonghai, who works at the psychiatry department of Beijing's Ping'an Hospital, said two officers in civilian clothes were stationed in his ward Friday. He said police were also stationed outside the hospital Thursday.
Xu is active in China's unofficial underground Christian church. He has been detained and harassed for trying to organize prayer meetings and informal discussion groups at his home.
``They told me they are here to supervise me,'' he said. The agents were affecting doctors' work and ``making the patients very uncomfortable,'' Xu added.
China commonly watches and harasses dissidents during high-level foreign visits, apparently to ward off attempts to protest or petition the visitors. Security is also tight on the anniversary of the government's crackdown on the June 4, 1989, pro-democracy protests at Tiananmen Square.
On Thursday, the start of Bush's two-day visit, authorities sealed off the vast square for hours.
The square, in central Beijing next to the parliament building where Bush met Chinese President Jiang Zemin, has been the site of countless protests - most recently last week - by members of the Falun Gong spiritual movement. China outlawed the group in July 1999 and declared it a cult.
Plainclothes agents have also tailed foreign journalists during Bush's visit, his first to Beijing as president.
In a speech Friday to students and faculty at Beijing's prestigious Tsinghua University, Bush called for greater tolerance.
``Dissent is not revolution,'' he said in remarks broadcast live on state television.
Veteran dissident Ren Wanding said police told him by telephone not to leave home while Bush is in town.
Ren said he also cannot send and receive e-mail because of interference with his phone line. He said the line is tapped.
However, Ren said he is allowed to make ordinary phone calls and receive visits from friends without harassment.
``Chinese democrats are really interested in Bush's visit, but we're not attaching high hopes to it,'' Ren said. ``China is still an authoritarian state and we have to solve our problems ourselves.''
Bao Tong, the most senior Communist Party official jailed for sympathizing with the 1989 pro-democracy protests, said about two dozen officers in three teams have watched him around the clock since the Lunar New Year holiday last week.
Bao said officers follow him to the front door of friends' apartments and have detained his visitors and forcibly returned them home in squad cars. Others have been called in for questioning by police, he said.
``They want to intimidate me into not going out and my friends into not coming to see me,'' he said. ``It's working since we're all now drifting apart.''