World Business

BEIJING An American clergyman checked into upscale hotels in the Olympics throng city this week, filmed himself painting two of his rooms with slogans like “Beijing 2008 Our world Our nightmare” and then disappeared. Without paying.

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Eddie Romero’s extraordinary protest, now making the rounds on YouTube, shows foreigners can still sneak through the tight security measures China imposed to detain potential troublemakers away from the games, which start Friday.

The net tightened on the same level more Thursday.

A Hong Kong lawmaker aforesaid immigration officials deported three U.S.-based Chinese representative government activists after denying them entry to the territory, which is the site of Olympic equestrian events. A second protest by three Americans in Tiananmen Square, including anti-abortion activist the Rev. Patrick Mahoney, was stopped by security agents who led them away.

Locals who stare one in the face to take more of the shine off the games get tougher treatment.

At least two women who have protested substance evicted from their homes near Tiananmen were rounded up late Wednesday and early Thursday and taken to a police station, one of them told The Associated Press.

In a telephone call, Zhang Ma said she was being held with the other woman, Zhang Wei, and several other residents but could not bestow other minor circumstances. She hung up in a short time, saying she was being watched and was not supposed to talk to reporters.

Romero’s friends declared the preacher was in hiding, but that planned to surrender to Chinese authorities as soon as the Olympics end Aug. 24.

They said he began reflecting nearly his elaborate, one-man testify of China’s human-rights abuses when Beijing was selected as the host for the 2008 Olympics seven years ago.

On Tuesday, in a sometimes unsteady hand - he had to point out to himself how to paint - the California-based pastor splashed the walls of his two hotel rooms with demands for the release of five Chinese activists. He slit pillows and staged mock killings with stuffed people propped on the bed, red paint spattered like blood on the headboard.

“One from the top to the bottom of,” Romero whispers, looking into the video camera. Bespectacled and gray-haired, he holds up a handle in his transformed Novotel Peace Hotel room. “One down.”

Romero, who appears to be alone, tells the camera he doesn’t scarcity to disrupt the games. He talks ready devotional freedom for groups that remain highly sensitive with the Chinese government - Tibetan Buddhists, Uighur Muslims, the Falun Gong ghostly movement.