Raid in China Arrests 37 Gays
PlanetOut, July
8, 2000
The Chinese government is stepping up vice enforcement, and among the first to fall to
the three-month campaign were 37 men arrested at a gay health spa, a police spokesperson
told wire service reporters July 7. Guangzhou’s Junjie Men’s Beauty and Health
Centre was raided on July 3 and shut down. It had only opened in February, but had already
signed up hundreds of members.
A police spokesperson told the Associated Press that it was the biggest detention sweep
against gays to date, but that while the owner of the Centre would certainly face criminal
charges, the other men might be released. A police spokesperson told Reuters, "The
men were not taken in because of their homosexuality, which is a voluntary mutual
relationship, but because the Centre charged 200 to 500 yuan for their [sexual]
services." To say the men were not arrested for being gay is probably a little less
honest than President Jiang Zemin’s description of the broad anti-vice campaign
launched July 1 as a law enforcement "strike against repulsive social
phenomena."
China doesn’t have a sodomy law per se, but gay venues have been closed down and
gay individuals incarcerated with charges of hooliganism; gays often report beatings and
torture at the hands of police. Although at least for some urban gays it has become much
easier in recent years to come out, to gather and even to organize to some degree, there
are others who feel so persecuted that they have sought asylum in other countries.
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