BEIJING - Telling police to "arrest them, then do the paperwork," China is girding for the 2008 Olympics by ordering a vigorous crackdown on Falun Gong and all other dissent in a northeastern province, according to a document that Chinese democracy activists say is an official decree.
It was not possible to independently verify the authenticity of the document released in the United States by the Free China Movement, a Washington-based group that opposed Beijing's selection last July to host the 2008 Summer Games.
The group said the decree came from the highest levels of China's government. And Andrew Nathan, a China scholar at Columbia University who co-edited "The Tiananmen Papers," about other Chinese government documents, said he believed the order was authentic.
The one-page order, directed to all police bureaus and courts in Jilin, said it came from that northeastern province's police headquarters and top court. It appeared to sanction the arrest of Falun Gong practitioners even without formal warrants.
The Free China Movement faxed a photocopy of the document to reporters in Beijing.
Jilin, about 800 kilometers (500 miles) northeast of Beijing, has been a stronghold of Falun Gong, the exercise and meditation movement banned by China's communist leaders in 1999 as an "evil cult." Other northeastern provinces were wracked by protests by laid-off workers this March.
The Connecticut-based China Support Network, a lobbying group, called the document "a smoking gun" — and a problem for the International Olympic Committee.
"Do the executives there in fact sanction the abuse of human rights under the cheerfully applied seal of the Olympics?" it said in a statement. "If the IOC has a shred of humanity, it will deny China the opportunity to host these games."
A senior Beijing Olympic organizing official, Wang Wei, expressed doubt about the document's authenticity but said he could not comment. "I don't know the facts," he said Thursday. Jilin police said they had no information and asked why reporters were interested.
Beijing pins great hopes on the 2008 Olympics as a showcase of China's progress and increasing international prestige, and high-profile protests would mar its efforts at imagemaking. But the duration of the document's order — more than seven years — implies a wider attempt at ensuring stability.
"The link to the Olympics seems more rhetorical than practical to me," Nathan said, suggesting it might be a way of putting existing policy on paper. "We're not used to seeing it in print," he said. "It may be consistent with their view of the rule of law."
The notice was not dated. But it ordered the campaign from May 20, 2000 — 13 months after Beijing submitted its bid to the International Olympic Committee but before it was chosen — until Dec. 30, 2007.
The Free China Movement said it deliberately released the document during the U.S. visit of China's vice president and expected future leader, Hu Jintao, who has defended Beijing's rights record during his trip.
It said the decree was obtained by the U.S.-based Committee for Investigation of Religious Persecution in China, which in February released scores of what China scholars said appeared to be genuine internal government documents.
The release also came a day after the head of an IOC inspection commission visited Beijing and declared himself fully satisfied with preparations. Hein Verbruggen sidestepped reporters' questions about IOC monitoring of China's rights practices.
The decree, titled "Notice on severely striking illegal organizations," bore two official-looking seals and said it was designed "to better welcome the smooth holding of the 2008 Olympic Games in our country" and "to stabilize social order."
The notice ordered that organizers of large protests and gatherings "who refuse to mend their ways" be sentenced to up to three years' imprisonment and fined 10,000 yuan (dlrs 1,200) — more than many urban Chinese earn in a year.
Participants in gatherings of three or more who ignore warnings should be detained up to 15 days and fined 1,000 yuan (dlrs 120), the notice said. Leaders of "illegal organizations," it added without defining such groups, "should be punished severely."
"Falun Gong practitioners and instigators should be cracked down upon to a greater degree," the order said. "First arrest them, then do the paperwork."
The notice said it was issued in accordance with regulations from China's Ministry of Public Security, the national police headquarters, and Supreme People's Court.