Freedom of Press: July 2008 Archives

By Charles Whelan | Agence France Presse | via UNCENSORED Yahoo! News
July 31, 2008

A defiant China stood firm on controversies swirling around the Olympics on Thursday, hitting back at the United States over human rights criticism and insisting Internet censorship would remain.

China's communist rulers responded sternly to critics following a storm of bad publicity this week surrounding their decision to renege on a pledge of allowing unfettered Internet access to foreign reporters covering the Games.

The decision highlighted long-standing concerns over the Chinese government's attitude towards human rights, and led the White House to intervene by saying China had "nothing to fear" from the Internet.

The Chinese foreign ministry reacted by criticising a meeting US President George W. Bush had with leading Chinese dissidents and describing some US lawmakers who spoke out on China's human rights record as "odious".

"We express strong discontent and firm opposition to this," foreign ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said about Bush's meeting on Tuesday with the dissidents.

"The US side has rudely interfered in China's internal affairs and sent a seriously wrong message to hostile anti-China forces," he said in a statement on the ministry's website.

Liu also hit out at a resolution by the US Congress that urged Beijing to improve on human rights and stop repression of ethnic minorities.

Liu said the resolution passed Wednesday was an attempt to politicise the Olympics and urged Washington to curb the "odious conduct" of anti-Chinese legislators.

Meanwhile, Olympic organisers said they would not back down on Internet censorship, saying banned sites were in breach of Chinese laws.

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By Karl Malakunas | Agence France Presse | via UNCENSORED Yahoo! News
July 30, 2008

China plunged into another Olympic controversy on Wednesday as it announced that the thousands of foreign reporters covering the Games would have to endure Internet censorship.

The backflip on allowing unfettered web access was met with apparent surprise and disappointment from the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which had previously hailed the supposed media freedoms the Games had brought to China.

"During the Olympic Games we will provide sufficient access to the Internet for reporters," Beijing Olympic organising committee spokesman Sun Weide said.

However "sufficient access" falls short of the complete Internet freedoms for foreign reporters that China's communist authorities had promised in the run-up to the Games, which begin on August 8.

Sun specified sites linked to the Falungong spiritual movement, which is outlawed in China, as ones that would remain censored for the foreign press at Olympic venues.

He did not identify any others but reporters trying to surf the Internet at the main press centre for the Games on Wednesday found a wide array of sites deemed sensitive by China's rulers to be out-of-bounds.

These included sites belonging to Tibet 's government-in-exile and Amnesty International, as well as those that had information on the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in which the military used deadly force to crush democracy protests.

The head of the IOC's press commission, Kevan Gosper, told AFP he would take the matter up with Chinese officials.

"I will speak with the Chinese authorities to advise them of the restraints and to see what their reaction is," he said.

Australian Olympic team chief John Coates, who is also an IOC member, expressed frustration with China's Internet about-face, pointing out that the Chinese authorities had gone back on one of their "key" Olympic promises.

"It certainly is disappointing... I think it's a matter that the IOC will take seriously," Coates told reporters.

In an exclusive interview with AFP two weeks ago, IOC president Jacques Rogge insisted there would be no censorship of the Internet.

"For the first time, foreign media will be able to report freely and publish their work freely in China," he said.

"There will be no censorship on the Internet."

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By Anita Chang | Associated Press - via (uncensored) Yahoo! News
July 25, 2008

An aggressive tabloid newspaper has had its Web site censored and could face further punishment by China's media authorities for running a photograph from the still-taboo 1989 Tiananmen Square democracy movement.

Editors at the Beijing News declined comment Friday about the photo published Thursday: a black-and-white image showing wounded young men in bloodstained shirts on the back of a three-wheeled cart. Captioned "The Wounded," the photo was one of four that accompanied a profile of Liu Heung Shing, a former photographer for The Associated Press and Time.

Within hours of Thursday's publication, the photos and article were removed from the newspaper's Web site. Authorities also ordered issues of Thursday's newspaper recalled from newsstands, Hong Kong's Ming Pao newspaper reported Friday.

Phones at the information office of the Beijing city government rang unanswered, while the General Administration of Press and Publication did not immediately respond to a faxed request for comment. Beijing News was available as usual at newsstands on Friday.

The incident shows the enduring sensitivity of the protests and their bloody suppression, even nearly two decades later. The protests and crackdown are only obliquely referred to, if ever, by state-run media. The ruling Communist Party has refused to disclose the number of people killed or allow a public investigation into events from the night of June 3-4, 1989.

Neither the photo, which ran on page C15 and which Liu took while working for the AP, nor the article mentioned the protests. The three other photos showed a man roller-skating by a Mao Zedong statue, young men wearing sunglasses and a couple chatting along a brick wall. They were part of a regular feature on China's changes since it began economic reforms 30 years ago.

The image of the wounded, however, is instantly recognizable to Chinese who remember the events of 1989.

Li Datong, a veteran state newspaper journalist who was forced from a top editing job for reporting on sensitive subjects, said the photograph was likely put in the paper by a young editor who was unaware of its background.

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The Christian Science Monitor
July 18, 2008

Like a marathoner at the finish line, China seems whipped. It struggled two decades to host the Olympics that open in three weeks. It has spent about $50 billion, pumped up its athletes, spiffed up Beijing, and fended off calls for a boycott. Now it may wonder if the effort will be worth it.

The Games themselves will, of course, be the world's main focus for two weeks after the Aug. 8 opening ceremonies. And thousands of athletes will fulfill once again the purpose of the modern Olympics, as stated by founder Pierre de Coubertin: "to bring together in a radiant union all the qualities which guide mankind to perfection."

But these Olympics also came with two political expectations, both of which are not even close to earning a medal.

One is human rights in China. The International Olympic Committee, in awarding the Games seven years ago, pointed to the Communist Party's record in suppressing dissent and said it expected that "openness, progress, and development in many areas will be such that the situation will be improved." The IOC also said athletes have "an absolute right" during the Games to speak out. The party itself did not publicly agree to improve its record, but the head of China's bidding team did say the Beijing Games would "benefit the further development of our human rights cause."

If anything, China's human rights record has worsened, as seen clearly during this spring's crackdown on Tibet's Buddhist monks. Last year, the number of arrests for "endangering state security" was at their highest since 2000.

And China's hand in world atrocities, such as Darfur and Zimbabwe, has also worsened. Steven Spielberg quit as artistic adviser for the Olympic ceremonies over China's backing of Sudan.

Why would China do this? These Olympics may simply serve as a pretext for the party to keep an authoritarian hold over 1.3 billion Chinese, who are increasingly revolting against corrupt rule. Not only do the Olympics justify crackdowns, but Chinese leaders have shown again and again that they will use foreign protests to whip up nationalist pride.

Those actions undercut the second expectation of these Olympics: to celebrate China's economic progress and its emergence as a power.

China's leaders may have thought the Beijing Olympics would serve the same purpose as the 1964 Games did for Japan: a coming-out party. Instead, the many protests, such as the interruptions of the torch relay, and the strong possibility of protests in Beijing during the Games, are likely to lower the PR boost.

The 2008 Olympics could end up like the 1936 Berlin Games, in which Hitler tried to promote Nazi (and Aryan) superiority, only to have American blacks, such as Jesse Owens, win track events. But these Games may not be the PR disaster of the 1980 Moscow Games that were widely boycotted after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were overturned within years after their Games. A better model for China would be the 1988 Seoul Games. During the run-up to those Olympics, the South Korean people used the coming event to rise up and force an end to a dictatorship. Now that was an example of "qualities which guide mankind to perfection."

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By Robin Shulman | The Washington Post
08 July 2008

Marking the one-month countdown to the start of the Beijing Olympic Games, activists gathered here and in cities around the world Tuesday to call on China to ease crackdowns on dissenters and release political prisoners.

A coalition of advocates met at City Hall in Lower Manhattan to announce the launch of a 24-hour appeal for China to release prisoners -- including journalists, bloggers and artists -- before the Olympics opening ceremony on Aug. 8. "It would show goodwill toward keeping promises they made in 2001 to the International Olympic Committee that they have not yet kept," said Lucie Morillon, Washington director of Reporters Without Borders, which helped organize the appeal.

Campaigns also were launched in Melbourne, Australia; Toronto and Vancouver, Canada; Hong Kong; Berlin; and other cities.

The protesters included Chinese democracy activists who are working with Tibetan independence advocates as well as campaigners pressing China to influence its ally Sudan to stop the killings in Darfur. They were joined by advocates for journalists and artists.

The Chinese government had been counting on the Olympics to provide an international showcase for the country's economic growth and development. But the Games have also focused attention on China's poor human rights record.

Activists report that in recent months, the Chinese government has expanded its controls: Foreign reporters have had difficulty getting visas, police have briefly detained dissidents during pre-Olympic sweeps, and police have warned activists who live outside the capital against traveling to Beijing.

"There are two Chinas in China," said Yang Jianli, who spent five years in prison after he attempted to address a workers' rally. "One, the Chinese government wants to showcase to outsiders. Another, the government does not want other people to see. Since my release last year, I cannot forget the political prisoners I left behind."

Global concern has grown since Chinese security forces cracked down harshly on protesters in Tibet in March.

Some world leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, have said they will not attend the Games' opening ceremony. President Bush reiterated Sunday at the Group of Eight summit in Japan that he plans to attend.

"I feel so sad that most of the political leaders -- they are going to go to the opening ceremony of the Games with Chinese Communist Party leaders," said Baiqiao Tang, speaking Tuesday at City Hall in Manhattan. He said he had protested in 1989 at Beijing's Tiananmen Square and was imprisoned afterward.

Activists have called for demonstrations outside Chinese embassies during the Olympics opening, and Reporters Without Borders is staging a cyber-demonstration on its Web site.

By Aileen McCabe | canada.com - where perspectives connect
July 06, 2008

With just one month to go before the opening ceremony, it is increasingly obvious worldwide efforts to use the Beijing Olympics to hold China's feet to the fire on human rights have floundered.

A 71-page report outlining violations of press freedom in China released Monday by Human Rights Watch is the latest indication that hosting the Games was not enough of a lever to convince the Beijing government to improve its sad rights record.

Proponents and critics of the Beijing Games agreed on one thing - that fewer restrictions for international media and scrutiny of China at this time would constitute progress, Sophie Richardson, HRW's Asia advocacy director said.

Yet the Chinese government, with the help of the International Olympic Committee, has done its best to impede progress. Talk of an Olympic boycott to pressure Beijing on rights never gathered wide support, but it fizzled totally last week when U.S. President George W. Bush said he would attend the opening ceremony on Aug. 8.

Following his announcement, French media reported President Nicolas Sarkozy, who has hemmed-and-hawed about boycotting, would also attend. Sarkozy's office did not deny the story and a disappointed Robert Menard, head of Reporters Without Borders, said in a television interview on the weekend: "This is a stab in the back of Chinese dissidents. This is truly cowardly and is the opposite of what one expects from France."

Hordes of world leaders, including Prime Minister Stephen Harper, are not going to the opening ceremony. But like Harper, most have taken some pains to make it clear their absence is not a boycott.

Over the past year, Beijing has made a few concessions to human rights concerns, almost certainly because it is hosting the Olympics.

When Hollywood director Steven Spielberg withdrew as a consultant to the opening ceremony to protest China's involvement in Darfur, China made some effort to bolster international attempts to rein in the rogue government.

And, this spring, after protests over the crackdown in Tibet reached a crescendo worldwide that threatened to affect the Games, China re-opened talks with representatives of the Dalai Lama.

But, as in the case of media freedom, which was the sole "rights" guarantee China actually gave the International Olympics Committee (IOC) when it was awarded the Games, progress on those files is spotty, at best.

The HRW report documents dozens of cases where the Chinese have harassed, intimidated and impeded foreign journalists in direct violation of its promise to allow free access nationwide to foreign reporters in the run-up to the Games.

The most egregious example is the closure of Tibet to foreign journalists following the violent protests in March, but HRW cites case after case where reporters working on environmental, health or industrial stories were also hassled, roughed-up or detained by security officials. It lists incidents where they were simply talking to disgruntled citizens and their notes or pictures were confiscated and their sources intimidated. In many, if not all of these cases, the reporters appealed to Beijing to live up to the guarantees it gave the IOC, but they were ignored.

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By James Pomfret | REUTERS | via yahoo!news UK&Ireland
July 07, 2008

A month before the Olympics, China continues to severely breach its pledge to allow full media freedoms, harassing and restricting foreign journalists in Tibet and elsewhere, Human Rights Watch said in a new report on Monday.

"Correspondents face severe difficulties in accessing forbidden zones, geographical areas and topics which the Chinese government considers sensitive and thus off-limits to foreign media," said the HRW report, entitled "China's Forbidden Zones: Shutting out of Tibet and other sensitive stories".

As part of Beijing's bid to host the Games it promised temporary regulations to allow complete media freedoms.

Around 25,000 foreign journalists are expected to cover the Beijing Games. The main press centre for the August 8-24 Games will be opened on Tuesday.

In addition to citing extensive examples of Chinese media abuses and restrictions including a media ban during the Tibet riots in March, the global rights group also criticised the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for not doing more to ensure China lived up to its media and human rights pledges.

"The Chinese government, with the help of the International Olympic Committee, has done its best to impede progress," Sophie Richardson, the Asia advocacy director at HRW, said in a statement.

"(The IOC) has said it prefers quiet diplomacy and in general we don't have a problem with quiet diplomacy ... the problem is when it's so quiet as to be utterly inaudible," Richardson added at a media briefing in Hong Kong.

HRW urged the IOC to establish a 24-hour hotline in Beijing for reporters during the Games to report media violations and to "publicly press the Chinese government to uphold" its temporary media freedom pledge until it expires in October.

The group urged Western leaders to speak out against abuses now, while they still had some leverage before the Games.

"I think if there isn't more pressure now, it's going to be very difficult to make any significant changes from the outside directed inward after the Games," Richardson said.

DOMESTIC CURBS

While the reporting encironment has improved for foreign journalists, the country has not relaxed its grip over domestic reporters.

PEN, an association founded to defend freedom of expression, said Sun Lin, a reporter in Nanjing in eastern China for U.S.-based news portal Boxun, was sentenced to four years in prison on June 27 for disturbing social order and illegal possession of firearms.

Authorities also detained or harassed several Chinese dissidents and rights activists to prevent them from meeting U.S. lawmakers visiting China in late June, PEN said in a statement.

The HRW report also documented intimidation of foreign reporters including death threats, the silencing of their Chinese sources as well as beatings of those pursuing sensitive stories.

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By Jim Yardley | The New York Times
July 02, 2008

Two United States representatives who were in Beijing to lobby for the release of more than 700 political prisoners had hoped to have dinner on Sunday with a group of Chinese human rights lawyers. But security agents had a different idea: they detained some of the lawyers and warned the others to stay away.

The detention is the latest example of how Chinese security agents are increasing pressure on dissidents in advance of the Beijing Olympics in August. The governing Communist Party has issued broader orders for local governments to defuse public protests, as a violent demonstration involving an estimated 30,000 people erupted last weekend in southwestern China.

In Beijing, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry said the representatives, Frank R. Wolf of Virginia and Christopher H. Smith of New Jersey, both Republicans, had overstepped their visas in arranging to meet the lawyers. The legislators, both sharp critics of China, expressed outrage over the interference by security agents.

"The people we were supposed to have dinner with all got stopped," Mr. Smith said in a telephone interview on Tuesday afternoon. "All of the world is watching, and this kind of behavior doesn't bring anything but more scrutiny to their human rights abuses."

Mr. Wolf called on President Bush to boycott the Olympic opening ceremonies if the detained lawyers were not released and if there were "no progress" on releasing 734 political prisoners on a list that the two representatives presented to the Chinese.

Mr. Bush has been invited to the opening ceremonies by President Hu Jintao and has rejected calls that he not attend.

On Tuesday afternoon, Liu Jianchao, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, said the two legislators should not have tried to meet with the lawyers. "They should not intervene in China's internal affairs or conduct something that is harmful to China-U.S. relations," he said during a regular news briefing.

Asked if visiting representatives must get approval from the Chinese government to meet with private citizens, Mr. Liu said: "The two congressmen applied to come to China to get in touch with the United States Consulate. We hope the two U.S. congressmen can respect the country they visit and obey Chinese laws. Regarding the issues on religion and human rights, the exchange between the two countries is more meaningful than meeting private citizens."

The representatives said they came to Beijing to discuss human rights, religious freedom, the Olympics and Darfur. Mr. Smith said they met Monday with the former foreign minister, Li Zhaoxing, and gave him their list of political prisoners. "He took it and said they would look at it," Mr. Smith said. "Our argument is that these people have done nothing wrong."

The guest list at the Sunday night dinner was supposed to include three activist lawyers, Li Baiguang, Teng Biao and Li Heping. They were among this year's winners of the Democracy Award by the National Endowment of Democracy in Washington. Li Baiguang and Li Heping have met with Mr. Bush.

On Sunday afternoon, authorities took Li Baiguang to a Beijing suburb, where he was placed under house arrest, said Chinese Human Rights Defenders, an advocacy group. Mr. Teng, who was also detained this year, was taken to the same Beijing suburb but later returned to his apartment under house arrest.

Another well-known lawyer, Jiang Tianyong, was blocked from leaving his apartment by two Beijing police officers, the advocacy group said. Still another lawyer, Li Fangping, said three police officers were stationed outside his apartment and threatened to follow him wherever he went.

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