GEOFFREY YORK
From Friday's Globe and Mail
July 18, 2008 at 5:40 AM EDT

BEIJING - With their infant daughter in their arms, Nuer and Guli visited a dozen hotels in Beijing in late May, searching desperately for a place to stay.

Most of the hotel clerks, mistaking them for foreigners, welcomed them and offered a room. But when the couple pulled out their identity cards, the clerks realized they were Muslim Uyghurs from China. And then the response was always the same: Sorry, no room at the inn.

Turned away by every hotel, the family rented an old car for $20 a day and slept in it for two nights. The conditions were so poor that their two-month-old baby became sick. Finally, they abandoned the car and begged to stay at a cousin's overcrowded apartment.

Today the couple have given up. They are packing their bags and getting ready to leave Beijing this month, joining the thousands of other Uyghurs, Tibetans and Mongolians who are fleeing under police pressure in the final weeks before the Olympics.

Ethnic minorities, migrant workers, petitioners and social activists are among the key targets of the Chinese security crackdown that has swept through Beijing in recent months. Now, with the Olympics just three weeks away, many of the targeted groups are making their final preparations to leave.

Some have little choice - they are being forcibly expelled by Chinese police. A British woman of Tibetan descent, Dechen Pemba, was deported from China last week. The 30-year-old teacher had lived in Beijing for two years and had a valid visa to work in China, but she was escorted to Beijing airport by a group of security agents who forced her onto an airplane with no explanation. The government later accused her of belonging to the Tibetan Youth Congress and engaging in "separatist activities" - charges that she strongly denied.

Tibetans and Mongolians are under pressure to leave Beijing because they are seen as potential Olympic troublemakers. Many people in Tibet and Inner Mongolia want greater autonomy and religious freedom for their regions of China. A wave of protests swept through the Tibetan regions this spring, sparking a harsh crackdown from Chinese authorities.

The Uyghurs are under greater pressure than any other ethnic minority because the government sees them not only as potential protesters but also as potential terrorists. The entire Uyghur population is often seen as a security threat, even though only a tiny fraction have been involved in radical or separatist activities.

Until recently, Beijing was home to dozens of Uyghur restaurants, specializing in the popular grilled food of their Muslim homeland, Xinjiang, in the remote northwest of China. But most have been forced to close over the past two years as the security clampdown has tightened.

Nuer, who has worked in restaurants in Beijing for most of the past 15 years, estimates that 4,000 to 5,000 Uyghurs have been detained or expelled from Beijing as the city prepares for the Olympics. His estimate is impossible to verify, but a recent survey confirmed that many Beijing hotels are refusing to rent rooms to Uyghurs.

Nuer started his own restaurant in 2005, employing a half-dozen Uyghurs to prepare Xinjiang-style food. But last year, he said, the police ordered him to shut down the restaurant and send all of his employees back to Xinjiang because of the approaching Olympics.

He worked for a few months at a friend's restaurant, grilling mutton on the sidewalk. But one day he arrived at the restaurant to find that his grill had disappeared in the night. Since then, he has been unable to find work in Beijing.

"Since 2006, there are fewer and fewer Xinjiang restaurants," he said. "The police come in and just take people away without any explanation, which frightens us very much."

Nuer himself has been detained five times by the police in the past two years. "They never explain why they are taking me to the police station. They search me and then they release me without filing any charges against me."

His wife, Guli, says she was one of 18 Uyghurs who were taken into police custody after gathering for a Muslim festival in Beijing last year. They were held at a police station for three days and then expelled from the city and forced to go back to Xinjiang, she said.

She returned to Beijing in May to be with her husband. But because of the impossibility of finding a hotel room or any other place to live, they are now packing for the long journey back to Xinjiang. They didn't want their surnames used for fear of getting into more trouble.

In the past, Nuer was often obliged to sleep on the floors of Internet cafés or saunas because he had nowhere else to stay. Now they are staying at their cousin's apartment, but the landlord has ordered them to leave.

"We feel very bad about this," Guli said. "We are Chinese, too, so why don't they allow us to stay in a hotel? When the Han Chinese people come to Xinjiang to work or travel, when do we ever refuse them?"