Saturday, July 19, 2008

Are you a 社会闲杂人 ?

Then better be careful the next months ! Watch your steps wherever you go: Security will follow you and ask you to leave. Read this from SHANGAIIST and you know more:
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Racial profiling at Shanghai's Tomorrow Square?
A guest at Tomorrow Square on People's Square has alerted us to this document entitled "Safety measures for the tenants of Tomorrow Square for the Olympic period" posted in the building. The document starts off quite innocently like this:
Recently, while the security situation has become of great concern both internationally and domestically, anti-China movements have become increasingly bold, with Tibetan and Uyghur separatist groups openly declaring war, proclaiming that they will use violent measures to achieve their purposes. The United Kingdom and the United States have already issued safety warnings to citizens travelling to China. With the 3.14 Tibet Riots, the 3.7 Southern Airlines terrorist act, the 5.5 bus explosion on line 842 in Shanghai, the 7.1 Zhabei police station attack and the appearance of numerous reactionary slogans everywhere, Tomorrow Square needs to tighten up its safety measures since it is a landmark building on People's Square located next to the Municipal Government building. This is to ensure the safety of the building and all its tenants and to prevent any unforeseen circumstances. It is with this in mind that we have established the following "Safety measures for the tenants of Tomorrow Square for the Olympic period" which will be enforced during the Olympic period (July 16th 2008 to October 31st 2008). These measures will be updated in accordance to any extraordinary event occurence or new safety warnings issued by government authorities.
We looked through the rest of the document and found most of the measures to be pretty standard ones like what you should do if you see a suspicious-looking package but the following two did strike us as being unnecessarily, erm, racist:
Whenever anyone that can be identified as "Tibetans", "Xinjiang Uyghurs" and "Qinghai Hualong Hui's" enters the building, please report them to the security department. Security guards will persuade them to leave the building, or follow them till they do so.
During the Olympic period, Tomorrow Square will reduce the number of exits and entrances according to the safety requirements. For now, we have provisionally decided to close the side door next to Starbucks in order to prevent Tibetan street hawkers and unauthorised individuals from entering the building. [Note: The term used to refer to 'unauthorised individuals', "社会闲杂人" could also be understood as "social undesirables" within the context.]
We doubt Tomorrow Square's security department received clearance from their corporate communications department before posting this up. Anyone seen similar "safety measures“ in your building?
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The next weeks will be very interesting to watch - more & more of things like this coming up China will put itself in a not very nice "corner".

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Good Luck - hope somebody soon finds out how much harm all this is doing to China !!!!