CHINA:As many as 1.5 million Beijing residents will be forced by the authorities from their homes in the run-up to the Olympic Games next year, according to the Swiss-based Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions.
An estimated 15,000 people are evicted every month in Beijing, often in a brutal and arbitrary manner with little compensation, the group says.
Large swathes of the Chinese capital have been bulldozed to make way both for Olympics-related developments and other new buildings, but the centre has accused municipal authorities of using evictions as "a tool of development" ahead of the games.
More than 1.2 million people have already been uprooted in Beijing as a result of infrastructure projects linked to the summer games.
Relocations are continuing all over the city, the centre adds. It has awarded Beijing city fathers and the games organisers its 2007 Housing Rights Violator Award for showing "complete disregard for the human right to adequate housing".
"Removing people from their homes is not only a human rights violation, but contrary to the Olympic spirit as well," said Jean du Plessis, deputy director of the Geneva-based group.
The group has also singled out two other countries - Burma and Slovakia - as leading housing rights violators in 2007.