By Elaine Kurtenbach
Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, Sept. 29, 1999; 12:39 p.m. EDT

BEIJING –– Far from the fireworks celebrating Friday's 50th anniversary of communist rule, thousands of migrants, street children and beggars will be languishing in dreary police detention centers.

Police have detained millions of Chinese in "custody and repatriation" centers that lack rudimentary sanitation and other basic needs, a human rights group said in a report released Wednesday.

Children, the mentally ill, the homeless and others deemed unsightly or undesirable have been crammed into the detention facilities, beaten and forced to work long hours without pay in violation of international treaties signed by China, said the New York-based group Human Rights in China.

One police official acknowledged on condition of anonymity that many people had been detained but said the number could not be made public. Others contacted declined to comment.

The Communist Party is staging gala celebrations, including a massive military parade, mass dances and fireworks, to mark the Oct. 1, 1949, founding of the People's Republic.

For many Chinese, the occasion offers a welcome seven-day holiday and a chance to enjoy streets newly refurbished and adorned with lights and floral displays.

However, authorities fearful of unrest or other disruptions are imposing a security vacuum of extraordinary tightness.

The government wants to make sure there are no outbursts from laid-off workers, democracy campaigners and members of the banned Falun Gong meditation group.

When four or five people began meditating cross-legged in Beijing's Tiananmen Square on Wednesday, authorities pounced within seconds and dragged them away.

Another man began doing Falun Gong-type exercises on the square about two hours later, and two uniformed police officers and another in plain clothes quickly came over and walked him off the square.

Falun Gong was banned by the government in July after thousands of its followers surrounded the Chinese leaders' Beijing compound in April in a daylong protest against official harassment of the group.

Police pried open manholes Tuesday along the parade route that transects the Chinese capital, apparently checking for bombs, and sealed them with shiny new padlocks.

Residents will be kept back by police cordons and traffic throughout much of the city will be forced to a halt.

It was a rural revolution that helped bring the communists to power in 1949.

But for the millions of migrants who have flooded into Beijing and other cities seeking higher paying jobs than can be found in the impoverished countryside, politically sensitive times such as the prelude to the anniversary are hazardous.

Those without legal permission to be in the cities risk being detained under a process known as "custody and repatriation." Police sometimes seize those with proper papers if they have an obvious accent or are poorly dressed.

State-controlled media have said police detained more than 16,000 migrants and others lacking official papers, a formal job or a fixed abode in Beijing this month.

The Human Rights in China report said that every year as many as 2 million people are detained under "custody and repatriation."

Up to one-fifth of those held are children. Others include the homeless, the mentally ill, prostitutes and petitioners who traveled into the cities to seek government help with various grievances.

The police detention centers "are often little more than holding pens for all those whose presence on the streets of the city is deemed unseemly or inconvenient, as well as anyone police officers decide to send there," the report said.

Even China's state-controlled media have reported poor conditions in the detention centers. Independent information is scarce due to government secrecy, but the report's findings are consistent with other descriptions provided by former detainees, some of whom were held for political reasons.

The report cited official publications describing many of the centers as being in dangerous condition – filthy, damp and dark, with inadequate ventilation.

Ostensibly welfare facilities intended to provide relief, education and resettlement, they hold people for weeks, months, sometimes years.

Detainees aged 12 and up are required to work 12-14 hours a day, usually without pay, and when they are released are required to pay for having stayed there, the report said.

Beijing officials have said they intend to force half of the city's 3 million resident migrants to leave.