Internet: 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.
It now appears that thousands of journalists arriving in Beijing to cover the Olympics will face a similar situation.
At the Olympic Main Press Centre, situated next to the main sporting venues, websites that are off limits include news sites.
The BBC's English-language website is available, but not the Chinese-language version, apparently "Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage".
Other Chinese-language news websites that have been blocked include radio station Voice of America and Hong Kong newspaper Apple Daily.
Also off limits is the website of Liberty Times, a Chinese-language newspaper published in Taiwan, a self-governing island that China considers its own.
Human rights organisations, too, appear to have fallen foul of the Chinese censors at the Olympic press centre.
Amnesty International, which this week published a report critical of China's human rights record, is not accessible.
Neither is the website for New York-based rights group Human Rights Watch.
Thorny issues
Also on the blacklist are some sites related to historical incidents that are deemed sensitive in China - such as the Tiananmen Square killings in 1989.
Hundreds, if not thousands, are thought to have died when Chinese soldiers opened fire on students and other protesters.
A Google search for "Tiananmen massacre" throws up a lot of results.
Some of them, such as a link to a BBC story on the incident, are accessible. Other websites, such as reference on Wikipedia, are not.
There are also restrictions on websites dealing with Tibet, which saw anti-government protests and riots earlier this year.
Websites advocating an end to Chinese rule in the Himalayan region have been blocked.
The Chinese government heavily censors information about Tibet to its own people - and Olympic journalists will also face these restrictions.
China has expressed pride in its facilities for journalists.
The Main Press Centre - which is for print journalists and photographers - is the biggest in Olympic history, serving 144 media organisations, China says.
But many journalists are already expressing anger at not being allowed unfettered access to the internet while covering the Olympics.
"This is not what we expected," said one furious German reporter.
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."
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 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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