[+/-] : Obama says he wouldn't attend the Olympics opening

Obama says he wouldn't attend the Olympics opening

ST. LOUIS (AP) — Democrat Barack Obama took issue Monday with President Bush's decision to attend the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games, saying he would go to Beijing only if he saw progress between the Chinese government and the Dalai Lama.

"In the absence of some sense of progress, in the absence of some sense from the Dalai Lama that there was progress, I would not have gone," the presidential candidate told reporters at a news conference.

Obama previously has called on the Republican president to boycott the ceremonies.

Bush said last week that he will attend opening ceremonies for the games in Beijing next month. Some world leaders plan to boycott the event because of China's human rights record and its handling of unrest in Tibet.

Chinese officials met last week with two envoys sent to Beijing by the Dalai Lama from his exile base in India.

A statement issued Saturday from the Tibetan side said another meeting would be held in October, but said it wished the Chinese leadership had taken "more tangible" steps during the talks. The Chinese side failed to agree to issue a joint statement committing the two sides to talks, it said

Obama said he "would liked to have seen some more aggressive efforts to encourage progress and talks between the Chinese government and the Dalai Lama.

"It strikes me that although some meetings have been taking place, that we were not aggressive in encouraging the Chinese government to make serious concessions there," he said.

Bush on Sunday defended his decision, saying that to skip the opening ceremonies would be an "affront" to the Chinese people.

Obama's Republican rival, John McCain, said in April that if he were president, he would only attend the opening ceremonies if China improves its record on human rights and other issues.
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[+/-] : Homegrown threats top Olympics security worries-official

Homegrown threats top Olympics security worries-official

Reuters
Homegrown threats top China's security worries for the Beijing Olympic Games, an official overseeing security said, warning that airborne threats to Games venues will be shot down if they come too close.

Tian Yixiang, head of the Beijing Olympic Games Security Protection Coordinating Group, said the top "terror" threats to the August Games come from Uighur militants campaigning for independence for Xinjiang in China's far northwest, from Tibetan independence groups, and from followers of the banned Falun Gong sect.
"The security situation facing the Beijing Olympic Games is stable overall, but there remain threats in the traditional and non-traditional security spheres," Tian told the official magazine Outlook Weekly.

"Terror attacks are the principal threat to Olympic Games Security," he said, according to the report, which was circulated on the Xinhua news agency's website (www.xinhuanet.com).

Tian, who has rarely given public comments on preparations for the Games, said a failed bomb attack on a plane in Xinjiang in March and anti-Chinese unrest across Tibet that same month, "amply showed that they are scheming to sabotage the Beijing Olympic Games".

The official comments bluntly underscored how, just over a month before the Games open on Aug. 8, Beijing sees the main Games threat from long-term domestic worries, rather than international terrorist groups with no direct focus on Chinese policies.
Exiled Uighurs and groups campaigning for Tibetan self-determination have both repeatedly denounced as self-serving exaggeration China's claims that they form terrorist threats.

In talks last week with envoys of the Dalai Lama, Chinese officials said the exiled Tibetan Buddhist leader should denounce "violent terror" and named the exiled Tibetan Youth Congress as a particular threat.

The Dalai Lama's envoys said they "categorically rejected" the Chinese claims that the Congress engaged in "violent terror".

Tian said the airspace around Games venues would be closely controlled and security forces would seek to warn off, force down or shoot down airborne attacks as they approached.

Chinese military forces have been readying for the Games since early 2005, and were still rigorously training, Tian said.
(Reporting by Chris Buckley; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)
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[+/-] : Rights Group Slams China's Handling of the Media Before Olympics

Rights Group Slams China's Handling of the Media Before Olympics

By VOA News

An international human rights group says the Chinese government continues to threaten and block foreign journalists in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics.


In a new report, Human Rights Watch says correspondents in China face severe difficulties in accessing forbidden areas and covering topics that the Chinese government considers sensitive.

The report cites examples of how journalists were barred from Tibet and other Tibetan areas in the wake of unrest there in March. It also documents how foreign reporters and their sources have faced intimidation or are barred from covering stories that would embarrass authorities, or tell more about incidents of social unrest.

The report's release Monday comes a day before China opens its main press center for the August games.

About 25,000 journalists are expected to cover the Beijing Games.

The group's report is based on more than 60 interviews with correspondents in China between December, 2007 and June of this year.

The report says China's foreign ministry has declined to investigate death threats made against more than 10 correspondents in March and April of this year, following the unrest in Tibet.

It also says authorities have threatened to revoke media organizations' accreditation to the Olympics if they report on events that could embarrass the Chinese government.

Human Rights Watch Asia Advocacy Director Sophie Richardson says that with such restraints in place, the Chinese government is limiting the ability of journalists to objectively report on the complex realities of modern China.
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[+/-] : Smog in Beijing five times over safety limit as Olympics nears

Smog in Beijing five times over safety limit as Olympics nears

Flora Bagenal, Times on Line

Pollution around the Olympic stadium in Beijing could be five times worse than levels deemed safe by the World Health Organisation.

Chinese officials admit they can no longer guarantee that the air quality will match international standards as pollution tests by The Sunday Times revealed the full extent of the challenge facing British athletes.

With just five weeks to go before the start of the Beijing Games, tests conducted outside the national stadium — known as the Bird’s Nest — and at Tiananmen Square, the starting point of the marathon, showed the air is thick with particulate pollution.

Even the Chinese government’s official air pollution index — which monitors a range of pollutants, including carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide — is running at double the level recommended by the WHO.

Du Shaozhong, deputy director of Beijing’s Environmental Protection Bureau, said: “We made a commitment to ensure air quality for the Olympic Games . . . as for whether we have reached the goal, that will be examined after the event.”

The British team is taking no chances and will train in Macau on the southern coast until the last minute to minimise athletes’ exposure to Beijing’s smog.

Haile Gebrselassie, the world’s leading long-distance runner, who suffers from asthma, has already pulled out of the marathon.

Last week The Sunday Times used an industrial hand-held air monitor to measure the number of particles in the atmosphere, which include car emissions and coal dust from factories. The particles are considered the biggest polluting factor.

The average reading at the stadium was 780,000 particles per litre of air. Even factoring in a 25% margin of error for humidity levels exaggerating the readings, this is more than five times the amount deemed safe by the WHO. The organisation considers 105,000 particles per litre of air a health risk.

Average readings at Tiananmen Square were lower — but still four times worse than the WHO standards when factoring in the humidity.

“Anything over 300,000 would be very worrying if you were using the same equipment in London,” said Professor Frank Kelly, a pollution expert at Kings College London.
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[+/-] : Pro-Tibet groups call for Olympic boycott

Pro-Tibet groups call for Olympic boycott

More than 60,000 Swiss have signed a petition demanding that President Pascal Couchepin boycott the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony on August 8.

The petition, organised by four pro-Tibet organisations, was handed over to the government on Thursday.

Couchepin announced at the end of May that he would attend the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games.

"Switzerland is home to the headquarters of the International Olympic Committee and other international sports federations, so it is only natural that the Swiss president attends the opening of the games," Couchepin said at the time.

The pro-Tibet groups also launched a campaign on Thursday, calling on the Swiss not to forget the Chinese-ruled region during the sporting event.

Switzerland is home to around 3,500 Tibetans.

from:
http://www.swissinfo.ch/

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[+/-] : US lawmakers: Bush should skip Olympics

US lawmakers: Bush should skip Olympics

By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN ,BEIJING (AP)

Two Republican congressmen have called on President Bush to steer clear of the Beijing Olympics unless China makes substantial improvements in its treatment of dissidents, including releasing prisoners of conscience.

Chris Smith of New Jersey and Frank Wolf of Virginia spoke Tuesday on a visit to Beijing during which security agents blocked a group of dissidents from dining with them.

The two men told reporters such interference underscores what many activists and monitoring groups say is a deterioration of human rights ahead of the games, despite past assurances from Beijing that holding them would give a boost to China's rights protections.

"Unless there's tremendous progress over the next month, whereby they release some of these prisoners, I personally do not think the president should attend, nor do I think the secretary of state should attend the Olympics," said Smith, a ranking member on the Congressional-Executive Commission on China.

Fan Yafeng, a legal scholar and researcher at the official Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said he was among those invited to Sunday's dinner with the congressmen, but decided not to attend after receiving a phone call from police telling him not go.

"This type of situation is not uncommon, we often experience similar restraints on our freedoms," Fan said.

"We are worried that human rights violations may even worsen after the Olympics are over because the world won't be watching us closely anymore," Fan said. "It's a scary thought."

The White House has made clear that Bush intends to go to China in August for the games but has not said when. "We have not announced the president's schedule yet," said White House deputy press secretary Gordon Johndroe.

Some world leaders have said they might boycott the Aug. 8 opening ceremony to protest the most recent Chinese security crackdown in Tibetan areas of China. French President Nicolas Sarkozy said he would attend if talks this week between China and the envoys of the exiled Tibetan leader, the Dalai Lama, made progress.

Some experts believe Beijing is agreeing to the discussions, previous rounds of which have produced little of substance, mainly to ease criticism ahead of the games.

Smith and Wolf said they presented a list of 734 political prisoners to Li Zhaoxing, chairman of the national legislature's Foreign Affairs Committee and a former foreign minister. Smith said they asked Li to work for the prisoners' release.

While praising China's economic progress, he said that such gains were made amid rights abuses and foreign policy stances that helped shore up repressive regimes in Sudan and elsewhere.

"Their government just doesn't have a very good record," said Wolf, who like Smith has long been active on Chinese human rights issues. Both men said the U.S. administration needs to publicly air complaints and identify imprisoned dissidents, saying private closed-door discussions were failing to produce results.

Chinese Human Rights Defenders, a network of activists and rights monitoring groups, said Fan and eight others were warned away from or prevented from attending the dinner. The rights group said lawyer Li Baiguang was detained in a Beijing suburb for three days and Teng Biao, a lecturer at the China University of Political Science and Law, was placed under house arrest.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao appeared to turn the blame on the two legislators, saying their visit was supposed to be focused on meetings with U.S. Embassy officials.

"We hope the U.S. congressmen, while making a visit to China, while conducting relevant activities, respect Chinese laws and regulations and respect their commitments," Liu told reporters.

Asked repeatedly what rules had been violated, Liu merely repeated his earlier remarks.

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[+/-] : China Troublemakers on Lockdown for Olympics

China Troublemakers on Lockdown for Olympics

from http://www.weirdasianews.com/

If you are a troublemaker in Shanghai, then the China government has issued you a notice.

“In order to strengthen public order during the Olympics and ensure the Games go smoothly, these are the rules important controlled people in our area must follow from April 1 to October 31.”

“Do not pick quarrels in public places”, “Do not express any political opinion to foreign reporters” and “Do not distort the truth, intentionally spread rumours or use other methods to whip up and disturb social order”.

In addition to the above rules, the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy issue a statement to the so called “troublemakers“, petitioners, or anyone on the “controlled” list, ordering them not to leave the city of Shanghai during the coming Olympics.

They have also been instructed not to talk about their political opinions to foreigners, leave the country (which is odd since they can’t leave Shanghai to begin with), or store weapons and explosives at their homes.

Anyone caught breaking the rules from April 1 to October 31, will be detained or prosecuted, depending on the rule broken.

The 2008 Olympic games will open on August 8th in Beijing, China.
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[+/-] : IOC investigates anti-Dalai Lama torch relay speech

IOC investigates anti-Dalai Lama torch relay speech

By Nick Mulvenney,BEIJING, June 25 (Reuters)

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is investigating a speech made by Tibet's Communist Party boss at the end of last weekend's Beijing torch relay leg in Lhasa in which he denounced the Dalai Lama.

But it was not immediately clear what the IOC, which is largely powerless and has vigorously defended its policy of non-involvement in politics, could do. It has said before it has "no political mandate" to instruct countries how to behave.

IOC communications director Giselle Davies said Beijing organisers (BOCOG) had been asked to provide the contents of Zhang Qingli's speech and said it "would regret very much" if media reports were accurate.

Hardliner Zhang made the comments at a ceremony marking the end of Saturday's two-hour parade of the Olympic flame through the streets of Lhasa, the scene of anti-Chinese riots in March.

"Tibet's sky will never change and the red flag with five stars will forever flutter high above it ... we will certainly be able to totally smash the splittist schemes of the Dalai Lama clique," he said in front of the Potala, the traditional seat of the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism.

Beijing blamed Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, and his followers for the March 14 riots in Lhasa and accused him of scheming to split the Himalayan region from China.

China often rails against the Dalai Lama, but not at Olympic-related events. It has often denounced critics for politicising the Games and the Olympic charter states that no kind of demonstration or political propaganda is permitted "in any Olympic sites or other areas".

The Dalai Lama denied being behind the riots, said he just wanted autonomy and religious freedom in Tibetan areas of the country and has called on his followers to support the Beijing Olympics as well as the torch relay.

The transcript of Zhang's speech on the website of the Tibet Information Office website (info.tibet.cn) omitted the line about the Dalai Lama.

Lhasa's Communist Party boss, Qin Yizhi, also denounced the Dalai Lama at the opening ceremony of the Lhasa leg of the relay on Saturday, saying it would "smash the scheming of the Dalai clique".

Tibet has cast a long shadow over the torch relay, which China hoped would project the image of a modern and vibrant country ahead of the Games.

But the March riots became a focus of anti-Chinese protests and counter-demonstrations on relay legs in London, Paris and San Francisco, prompting ugly scenes which alarmed the IOC.

The Vancouver Sun reported on Wednesday that the international leg of the Beijing Paralympic torch relay, scheduled to take in London, Vancouver and Sochi, had been cancelled.

A BOCOG spokesman did not confirm the cancellation but a news conference has been called for 0700 GMT on the "Scale Reduction of Beijing 2008 Paralympic Torch Relay".
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[+/-] : Dalai Lama under fire at Tibet relay

Dalai Lama under fire at Tibet relay

By Geoff Dyer in Beijing,The Financial Times

Chinese officials used the visit of the Olympic torch to the Tibetan capital on Saturday to launch an attack on the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader.

The torch relay in Lhasa lasted for just over two hours, much shorter than had been planned before the unrest in Tibet in March. It went off without protests along a route lined with a heavy security presence.

"We will certainly be able to totally smash the splittist schemes of the Dalai Lama clique," said Zhang Qingli, Communist party secretary in Tibet, at the end of the event, according to Reuters.

Speaking in front of the Potala Palace, the Dalai Lama's former residence, Mr Zhang said: "Tibet's sky will never change and the red flag with five stars [China's flag] will forever flutter high above it."

The government has accused the Dalai Lama and other exiles of inciting the unrest, particularly the riot on March 14 when several Han Chinese were killed. The Dalai Lama has denied the charge. The torch goes next to Qinghai province.

The decision to carry on with the Tibet visithas been criticised by Tibetan exiles and human rights groups, which accuse the government of politicising the torch relay.

"This provocative decision - with the blessing of the International Olympic Committee - could aggravate tensions and undermine the fragile process to find a peaceful long-term solution," said Sharon Hom, executive director of Human Rights in China.

"The government's insistence on parading the torch through Lhasa can only undermine the respect and trust required for a genuine dialogue with the Dalai Lama."

A small group of foreign reporters, allowed into Tibet to cover the event, said hundreds of paramilitary and other police were positioned along the route. They added that people living nearby were told to stay at home unless they had a special pass to witness the torch.
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[+/-] : Tensions simmering with Olympic torch in Tibet

Relations are still very tense between Chinese officials and Tibetans. (Getty Images: Guang Niu)

Tensions simmering with Olympic torch in Tibet
By China correspondent Stephen McDonell,ABC News on line

Over the weekend the Chinese Government went ahead with its controversial plan to run the Olympic torch relay through Tibet.

Heavy security guaranteed there were no human rights demonstrations. Instead, the relay ended up being a rallying point for local political leaders who vowed to destroy the Dalai Lama, even as they put new touches to some of Lhasa's landmarks.

Though foreigners are still banned from entering Tibet, after the violent rebellion in March a handful of journalists were allowed into Lhasa to cover the torch relay, which had been cut from three days in Tibet to three hours.

We were allowed to witness the relay in the capital Lhasa, along with a small, specially-selected crowd.

Most ordinary people were told to stay off the streets until it was over. Relations are still very tense between Chinese officials and Tibetans.

After the relay we were kept busy with a program full of whirlwind visits to cultural attractions.

When Tibetans restore historic buildings the workers sing and bang and tap in time. This image of happy, working Tibetans in touch with their culture is a side to life that Government authorities are happy for foreign reporters to see.

We visited the Sera Monastery where the recent conflict started in March, after its monks clashed with police on the anniversary of a failed uprising.

There are supposed to be 550 monks living at the Monastery. We saw fewer than 10. Maybe they were confined to their sleeping quarters. There were a lot of police with walkie-talkies and local officials with loud hailers telling us where we should go and to hurry up.

We were eventually presented with a "senior monk" who could talk to us. He said the monks from his monastery had been permitted in recent days to go shopping in town. He was asked what the monks are being taught in the recently introduced re-education classes.

Speaking through a translator he said that the content of the legal knowledge education was to improve the monks' understanding of state law and the constitution so that they "do not violate laws".

He seemed to want to go on to explain himself but we were denied a chance to ask another question.

We were then taken to the Potala Palace the huge former residence of the Dalai Lama.

It was here that the torch relay became a political rally when the head of the Tibetan Communist Party, Zhang Qingli, held up the Olympic torch and then announced "Tibet's sky will never change and the red flag with five stars will forever flutter high above it".

Inside the Palace on a hill overlooking the site is a room which used to be the home of China's favourite enemy, the Dalai Lama.

I got to stand in his bedroom, a small, modest space decorated with religious artefacts. Upstairs there was banging as workers carried out restoration.

It is unclear though what he would have thought had he been here to look out his window at the sights and sounds of the Olympic torch arriving to great fanfare, and local Government officials declaring their readiness to crush the "Dalai Lama clique".

What you can see from the room is a city with a heavy police and military presence.

Over the weekend trucks full of riot police were driving up and down and by late Sunday only a smattering of pilgrims had returned to the streets which are normally crowded with visitors to the holy city.

I have been to Tibet several times, and the fear and mistrust here is much worse now than it was before.

The overall sense is of a land under occupation where the occupiers are worried that the locals could turn on them at any time, and they are prepared to use the full force of the state to make sure that that does not happen.
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[+/-] : Beijing to limit vehicle use during Olympics

Beijing to limit vehicle use during Olympics
Beijing (dpa) - China on Friday said it would restrict usage of vehicles before and during the Beijing Olympics to improve air quality and allow better traffic flow for visitors.

All private vehicles will be limited to alternate-day usage from July 20 to September 20, based on licence plates ending in odd and even numbers, the government said.

Taxis, buses and emergency vehicles are exempt from the restrictions, while about 70 per cent of government vehicles are expected to be kept off Beijing's roads.

The restrictions are designed to improve traffic circulation and raise air quality for the Olympics in August and the Paralympics in September, the Beijing city government said in a statement.

The traffic control measures are expected to remove a daily average of about one-third of the city's 3.3 million vehicles.

The statement said many heavy trucks and all vehicles which do not meet the European number one emissions standard will be banned throughout the period.

The government will exempt all Beijing vehicle owners from road tax for the three months in compensation for the temporary restrictions, costing it 1.3 billion yuan (186 million dollars) in lost revenue.

China earlier said it planned controls on industrial pollution and suspended dust particles to improve Beijing's air quality during the Olympics.

The city will ban all excavations and concrete pouring at construction sites from July 20 until September 20, Du Shaozhong, deputy director of the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau, told reporters recently.

It will shut down inefficient coal boilers, stop work at quarries, cement and concrete plants around Beijing, and has ordered 19 heavy-polluting firms in the city to cut emissions by an extra 30 per cent in the three-month period, Du said.

Contingency plans for the Olympic competition days in August include tougher "urgent control measures" to be used if Beijing experiences "extremely negative atmospheric conditions", he said.

The International Olympic Committee said it would also have contingency plans for the possible rescheduling of cycling, distance running and other events demanding high respiratory function for more than an hour, depending on pollution and other factors such as heat, humidity and wind.
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[+/-] : France urged to support Games ceremony boycott as new head of Council of Europe

France urged to support Games ceremony boycott as new head of Council of Europe

Reporters Without Borders called today on France, as new president of the Council of Europe, and its European partners to say they would boycott the Olympic Games opening ceremony in Beijing on 8 August.


Members of the worldwide press freedom organisation unfurled a giant 100 sq.metre banner showing the Olympic rings as handcuffs across the front of a building opposite the Brussels headquarters of the Council, which began its new session today.

“Threatening to boycott the ceremony may be the only way to get concrete results,” it said. “If Europe does not take a stand, the Chinese government will be able to dismiss future European Union demands to improve human rights. The Olympic flame will be passing through the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, in a few days time and Europe’s political leaders will win respect by firmly calling now for greater freedom of expression in China. Repression of journalists there has not diminished and well-known dissident and blogger Huang Qi has just been arrested again. It is urgent for Europe to speak up.

“French President Nicolas Sarkozy has said clearly that he will not attend the ceremony unless talks resume between the government and representatives of the Dalai Lama. The situation is deadlocked and China rejected the recent United States and EU joint call for sincere talks about Tibet as interference in its internal affairs. Beijing also refuses to allow foreign journalists to visit Tibet and the neighbouring Xinjiang autonomous region where mass arrests and “re-education” operations are under way,” Reporters Without Borders said.

“The competitors at the Games rightly say it is up the politicians, not them, to sort out this tricky issue. The Council of Europe must not pass up this historic chance to create the necessary conditions to extract real progress from the Chinese government. The ruling Communist Party will not always be able to get away with answering legitimate demands to free political prisoners by drumming up nationalistic fervour.”

Reporters Without Borders has for several months been urging a boycott of the opening ceremony by heads of state and government and members of royal families. The Polish, Estonian, Austrian and Czech governments have already agreed not to attend. Most EU states have not yet taken a stand and are waiting for France to take the lead in the name of Europe.

Reporters Without Borders is also calling on European institutions to ask the International Olympic Committee to consider the criteria for allowing countries to host future Olympic Games and to take account of the local level of individual liberty, notably freedom of expression.

About 100 journalists, cyber-dissidents, bloggers and other Internet users are currently imprisoned in China, with only two months to go before the Games start. The Chinese government has not kept the promises it made to improve human rights after Beijing was awarded the 2008 Games in 2001.

For more on the Reporters Without Borders worldwide campaign concerning the 2008 Games, see: www.rsf.org (in English, Chinese, Spanish, French and Arabic).
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[+/-] : China tightens screws against dissidents ahead of Olympics

China tightens screws against dissidents ahead of Olympics

GENEVA (AFP) — Chinese authorities have stepped up efforts to censor dissenting voices in the run-up to the Olympic Games, a report by two human rights groups charged Thursday.


"The context related to the run-up to the Olympic Games in August 2008 has continuously strengthened an environment already hostile to human rights and their defenders," said the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders in its annual report.

The observatory is a joint project by the Geneva-based World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) and the Paris-based International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH).

It cited four people who were arrested after making protests in relation to the Olympic Games.

Among them was Hu Jia, who was taken into custody last December 27 after publicly criticising the Chinese government's failure to keep its promise to promote and protect human rights, a promise that was make when it was awarded the Games.

Hu, 34, was found guilty at a Beijing court of "incitement to subvert state power" following a one-day trial in March, and sentenced to three-and-a-half years behind bars in early April.

In a foreword to the report, writer Wei Jingsheng wrote: "In particular, last year the Chinese Government's repression has rapidly upgraded, in an effort to make sure there is no dissident voices from the people during the 2008 Olympics."

Outside China, charged Wei, some Western politicians have even tried to stop their sportsmen from expressing their political opinions on China during the Games.

In February, the London-based Mail on Sunday newspaper reported that the British Olympic Association had inserted clauses into its athletes' contracts forbidding them to comment on "politically sensitive issues."

Other human rights repression in China had included the forced evictions of citizens from their homes as well as censorship of the media and Internet, said the NGO.

Press freedom in China is now among the lowest in the world, and commentaries are tailored to meet "the propaganda standard(s) of the Chinese Communist Party," said the report.
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[+/-] : China's Olympic Nightmare

China's Olympic Nightmare

What the Games Mean for Beijing's Future
By Elizabeth C. Economy and Adam Segal
From Foreign Affairs , July/August 2008

Summary: Failure to plan for predictable problems has turned China's coming-out party into an embarrassment.


ELIZABETH C. ECONOMY is C. V. Starr Senior Fellow and Director for Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. ADAM SEGAL is Maurice R. Greenberg Senior Fellow for China Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

On the night of July 13, 2001, tens of thousands of people poured into Tiananmen Square to celebrate the International Olympic Committee's decision to award the 2008 Olympic Games to Beijing. Firecrackers exploded, flags flew high, and cars honked wildly. It was a moment to be savored. Chinese President Jiang Zemin and other leaders exhorted the crowds to work together to prepare for the Olympics. "Winning the host rights means winning the respect, trust, and favor of the international community," Wang Wei, a senior Beijing Olympic official, proclaimed. The official Xinhua News Agency reveled in the moment, calling the decision "another milestone in China's rising international status and a historical event in the great renaissance of the Chinese nation."

Hosting the Olympics was supposed to be a chance for China's leaders to showcase the country's rapid economic growth and modernization to the rest of the world. Domestically, it provided an opportunity for the Chinese government to demonstrate the Communist Party's competence and affirm the country's status as a major power on equal footing with the West. And wrapping itself in the values of the Olympic movement gave China the chance to portray itself not only as a rising power but also as a "peace-loving" country. For much of the lead-up to the Olympics, Beijing succeeded in promoting just such a message.

The process of preparing for the Games is tailor-made to display China's greatest political and economic strengths: the top-down mobilization of resources, the development and execution of grand-scale campaigns to reform public behavior, and the ability to attract foreign interest and investment to one of the world's brightest new centers of culture and business. Mobilizing massive resources for large infrastructure projects comes easily to China. Throughout history, China's leaders have drawn on the ingenuity of China's massive population to realize some of the world's most spectacular construction projects, the Great Wall, the Grand Canal, and the Three Gorges Dam among them. The Olympic construction spree has been no different. Beijing has built 19 new venues for the events, doubled the capacity of the subway, and added a new terminal to the airport. Neighborhoods throughout the city have been either spruced up to prepare for Olympic visitors or simply cleared out to make room for new Olympic sites. Official government spending for the construction bonanza is nearing $40 billion. In anticipation of the Olympics, the government has also embarked on a series of efforts to transform individual behavior and modernize the capital city. It has launched etiquette campaigns forbidding spitting, smoking, littering, and cutting in lines and introduced programs to teach English to cab drivers, police officers, hotel workers, and waiters. City officials have used Olympic projects as a means to refurbish decaying buildings and reduce air pollution, water shortages, and traffic jams.

Yet even as Beijing has worked tirelessly to ensure the most impressive of Olympic spectacles, it is clear that the Games have come to highlight not only the awesome achievements of the country but also the grave shortcomings of the current regime. Few in the central leadership seem to have anticipated the extent to which the Olympic Games would stoke the persistent political challenges to the legitimacy of the Communist Party and the stability of the country. Demands for political liberalization, greater autonomy for Tibet, increased pressure on Sudan, better environmental protection, and an improved product-safety record now threaten to put a damper on the country's coming-out party. As the Olympic torch circled the globe with legions of protesters in tow, Beijing's Olympic dream quickly turned into a public-relations nightmare.

Although the Chinese government excels when it comes to infrastructure projects, its record is poor when it comes to transparency, official accountability, and the rule of law. It has responded clumsily to internal and external political challenges -- by initially ignoring the international community's desire for China to play a more active role in resolving the human rights crisis in Darfur, arresting prominent Chinese political activists, and cracking down violently on demonstrators. Although there is no organized opposition unified around this set of demands, the cacophony of voices pressuring China to change its policies has taken much of the luster off of the Beijing Games. Moreover, although the Communist Party has gained domestic support from the nationalist backlash that has arisen in response to the Tibetan protesters and their supporters in the West, it also worries that this public anger will spin out of control, further damaging the country's international reputation. Already, China's coveted image as a responsible rising power has been tarnished.

For many in the international community, it has now become impossible to separate the competing narratives of China's awe-inspiring development and its poor record on human rights and the environment. It is no longer possible to discuss China's future without taking its internal fault lines seriously. For the Chinese government, the stakes are huge. China's credibility as a global leader, its potential as a model for the developing world, and its position as an emerging center of global business and culture are all at risk if these political challenges cannot be peacefully and successfully addressed.

TIANANMEN'S GHOSTS

Nothing has threatened to ruin China's Olympic moment as much as criticism of the country's repressive political system. China lost its bid for the 2000 Summer Olympics to Sydney, Australia, at least in part because of the memory of the violent Tiananmen Square crackdown of June 1989. When China made its bid for the 2008 Games, Liu Jingmin, vice president of the Beijing Olympic Bid Committee, argued, "By allowing Beijing to host the Games, you will help the development of human rights." Fran蔞is Carrard, director general of the International Olympic Committee, warily supported such a sentiment: acknowledging the seriousness of China's human rights violations, he nonetheless explained, "We are taking the bet that seven years from now ... we shall see many changes."

Few would place such a bet today. For months, human rights activists, democracy advocates, and ethnic minorities in China have been pressuring the government to demonstrate its commitment to greater political freedom. For many of them, the Olympics highlight the yawning gap between the very attractive face that Beijing presents to the world and the much uglier political reality at home. Exactly one year before the Olympics, a group of 40 prominent Chinese democracy supporters posted an open letter online denouncing the Olympic glitz and glamour. "We know too well how these glories are built on the ruins of the lives of ordinary people, on the forced removal of urban migrants, and on the sufferings of victims of brutal land grabbing, forced eviction, exploitation of labor, and arbitrary detention," they wrote. "All this violates the Olympic spirit." Even Ai Weiwei, an artistic consultant for Beijing's signature "Bird's Nest" stadium, has been critical of the Chinese government. He declared in an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel, "The government wants to use these games to celebrate itself and its policy of opening up China .... By now, it has become clear to me that this hope of liberalization cannot be fulfilled .... The system won't allow it."

Protests have arisen around virtually every Olympic Games in recent history, but Beijing, with its authoritarian political system, is uniquely threatened by dissenting voices, and it has responded with a traditional mix of intimidation, imprisonment, and violent repression. Teng Biao, a lawyer and human rights activist, was seized in March 2008, held by plainclothes police for two days, and warned to stop writing critically about the Olympics. Yang Chunlin, a land-rights activist, was arrested for inciting subversion because he had gathered more than 10,000 signatures from farmers whose property had been expropriated by officials for development projects. After a 20-minute trial, he was sentenced to five years in prison. In April, the HIV/AIDS activist Hu Jia, who was also one of the authors of the open letter, was sentenced to three and a half years in jail for subversion, after being held under house arrest for several months along with his wife and baby daughter. Although the vast majority of Chinese are probably unaware of these protests and arrests, Beijing's overreaction demonstrates how fearful the Chinese government is that any dissent or protests could garner broader political support and threaten the party's authority.

CRASHING THE PARTY

The international community has also raised its own human rights concerns. For more than a year, China has endured heightened scrutiny of its close economic and political ties to Sudan. A coalition of U.S. celebrities and international human rights activists has ratcheted up the pressure on Beijing to do more to help bring an end to the atrocities in Darfur, labeling the 2008 Olympics "the genocide Olympics." The very public attention they have brought to China's relations with the Sudanese government prompted the movie director Steven Spielberg to withdraw as the artistic adviser for the opening and closing ceremonies for the Games. It also seems to have had some effect on Beijing, which now strives to appear as if it is placing more pressure on Khartoum.

The Chinese government's questionable human rights record has received even more scrutiny since its violent suppression of Tibetan demonstrators in the spring. In March, Tibetan Buddhist monks marched to commemorate the 49th anniversary of Tibet's failed independence uprising and to call for greater autonomy for Tibet and the return of their exiled religious leader, the Dalai Lama. The demonstrations soon escalated into violent protests. Chinese police forcefully cracked down on the protesters in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa and throughout other Tibetan areas of western China, leaving more than a hundred dead and injuring hundreds more.

Ignoring international calls for restraint, Beijing closed off much of the affected region, detained or expelled foreign journalists from the area, and created a "most wanted" list of Tibetan protesters. All independent sources of news, including broadcasts by foreign television stations and YouTube videos, were blacked out in China, and text messages in and out of Tibet were filtered. Vitriolic government propaganda condemned the Dalai Lama as a "wolf in monk's robes" and a "devil with a human face but the heart of a beast." Chinese officials accused the "evil Dalai clique" of attempting to restore "feudalist serfdom" in the region and called for a "people's war" against it. The international community immediately condemned the crackdown and called for Beijing to resume negotiations with representatives of the Dalai Lama. Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Czech President V塶lav Klaus, and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk have since announced that they will not be attending the Olympics' opening ceremonies.

As the Olympic torch made its way across the globe, the number of protesters along its path ballooned, from a few in Athens to thousands in London, Paris, San Francisco, and Seoul. These large-scale disruptions of Olympic pageantry humiliated the Chinese government and angered Chinese citizens, producing a wave of nationalist counterdemonstrations by Chinese living abroad and millions of virulent anti-Western posts on Chinese Web sites. A bit more than a month after Beijing's initial crackdown, senior Chinese leaders indicated a willingness to meet with the Dalai Lama's envoys. But this does not represent a fundamental shift in policy; it is merely a stopgap measure designed to quell the international outrage.

WAITING TO INHALE

Although some foreign athletes have joined the chorus of China's critics, the more immediate concern for many Olympians will be whether Beijing can ensure clean air and safe food for the duration of the Games. The city has reportedly spent as much as $16 billion to deliver a "green Olympics"; many of the Olympic sites showcase a number of clean-energy and water-conservation technologies, and for the past seven years the city has been shutting down many of the biggest polluters and steadily weaning the city's energy infrastructure off coal, replacing it with natural gas. On February 26, senior Chinese officials formally announced a more sweeping effort, including restrictions on heavy industry in five neighboring provinces surrounding Beijing, a ban on construction in the months immediately preceding the Olympics, and plans to compensate car owners for staying off the road during the Games.

But pollution levels in Beijing are still far above average. On a typical day, the city's air pollution is three times as bad as the standard deemed safe by the World Health Organization. Last August, an air-quality test revealed that pollution levels in the city had barely improved despite one-third of the cars having been removed from the city's roads. Even some senior Chinese officials have reservations about the prospects for a green Olympics. The mayor of Beijing, Guo Jinlong, admitted in early 2008 that bringing traffic and environmental pollution under control by the time the Games begin would be an "arduous" task. After all, there are few economic incentives for businesses to reduce pollution; the central government routinely calls on local officials and businesses to clean up their act to no effect. Many factory managers have agreed to slow production during the Olympics but not to shut down. In the brutally competitive Chinese economy, closing factories for several weeks could well spell the end of those enterprises unless the government provides significant financial compensation. Meanwhile, corruption flourishes, and local officials openly flout environmental laws and regulations. In January 2008, it was revealed by a Western environmental consultant, Steven Andrews, that officials in Beijing's Environmental Protection Bureau had for several years been skewing the city's air-quality data by eliminating readings from some monitoring stations in heavily congested areas.

Faced with the prospect of dangerously high levels of air pollution during the Games, International Olympic Committee officials have warned that competition in endurance sports, such as the marathon and long-distance cycling, might be postponed or even canceled. The world's fastest marathon runner, Haile Gebrselassie, has already withdrawn from the Olympic race for fear that air pollution might permanently damage his health. Many athletes are planning to take precautions, such as arriving in Beijing as late as possible, coming well equipped with medication for possible asthma attacks, and wearing masks once there.

Beijing's capacity to provide safe food and clean water for the athletes is also in question. In the past year, China has endured a rash of scandals involving food tainted with steroids and insecticides, and as much as half of the bottled water in Beijing does not meet potable-water standards. Some teams, such as the United States' and Australia's, have announced that they will be bringing some or all of their own food and that their bottled water will be supplied by Coca-Cola. Olympic officials have put in place a massive food-security apparatus that will track the athletes' food from the producers and distributors to the Olympic Village. Having promised a safe and green Olympics, Beijing must now deliver. Otherwise, it risks irrevocably damaging the historic legacy of the 2008 Games.

BEIJING'S BLIND SPOT

Beijing's failure to respond creatively to its critics and effectively manage its environmental and product-safety issues reveals a certain political myopia. China's leaders have long been aware that opponents of the regime would try to disrupt the Olympics. They prepared extensively for disturbances by developing a citywide network of surveillance cameras and training, outfitting, and deploying riot squads and other special police. They also made some attempts to defuse international hostility, such as offering to renew the human rights dialogue with Washington that was suspended in 2004 and publicly pressuring Khartoum to accept a joint African Union-United Nations peacekeeping force. But Beijing has been unable to counter the images emanating from Darfur and Tibet. Chinese leaders simply saw no relationship between the pageantry of the Olympics and Tibet, Sudan, or broader human rights concerns, and they never figured out how to engage and disarm those who did. They continue to fail in this regard.

As a result, tensions will run high until the end of the Games. There are also real worries that with the spotlight focused on Beijing during the Games, some of the opposition to the regime could take an extreme form. For example, Chinese security forces have expressed concern that activists from the religious movement Falun Gong might attempt to immolate themselves in Tiananmen Square. Because of such concerns, the 30,000 journalists covering the Games may find themselves straitjacketed when reporting on controversial stories. And despite recent assurances that a live feed from Beijing will be allowed and that the Internet will be uncensored in China, the government has yet to fulfill its promise to allow foreign journalists unfettered access throughout the country.

The Chinese public is already angry about what it sees as a pervasive bias toward Tibet and disrespect of China in the Western media. Chinese citizens are likely to view any disturbances of the Games as an effort to embarrass the country and undermine China's rise. Foreign media, corporations, and governments might all bear the brunt of the sort of nationalist backlash that the French retailer Carrefour endured -- in the form of a consumer boycott -- in the wake of the disrupted torch ceremony in Paris.

The combination of demonstrators desperate for the world's attention and the heightened nationalism of Chinese citizens makes for an extremely combustible situation. The official Beijing Olympic motto of "One World, One Dream" suggests an easy cosmopolitanism, but Chinese nationalist sentiment will be running high during the Games, stoked by the heat of competition. In the past, sporting events in China, in particular soccer matches against Japanese teams, have led to ugly riots, and the same could happen during the Olympics. If the Games do not go well, there will be infighting and blame shifting within the party's central leadership, and it will likely adopt a bunker mentality. Vice President Xi Jinping, the government's point man on the Olympics and President Hu Jintao's heir apparent, would likely face challenges to his presumed leadership.

A poor outcome for the Games could engender another round of nationalist outbursts and Chinese citizens decrying what they see as racism, anti-Chinese bias, and a misguided sense of Western superiority. This inflamed form of Chinese nationalism could be the most enduring and dangerous outcome of the protests surrounding the Olympics. If the international community does not welcome China's rise, the Chinese people may ask themselves why China should be bound by its rules. As a result, Beijing may find the room it has for foreign policy maneuvering more restricted by public opinion. This form of heightened nationalism has occasionally hurt the Chinese government, as happened after a U.S. spy plane was shot down over China in 2001. When the crew was eventually released, an outraged Chinese public accused the government of weakness and kowtowing to the West. More recently, despite a decade of increasingly close economic, political, and cultural ties between Beijing and Seoul, South Koreans were outraged by the Chinese counterprotests during the Olympic torch ceremony; in response, the South Korean government imposed tight restrictions on the number of Chinese students permitted to study in the country. Sensing the potentially damaging consequences of a prolonged nationalist backlash, the official Chinese media began signaling in May that it was time for people to move on, focus on economic development, and steer clear of staging counterprotests and boycotting Western companies.

The barrage of criticism China has endured prior to the Olympics may have brought a short-term gain in forcing the Chinese leadership to agree to meet with the Dalai Lama's envoys, but real reform of China's Tibet policy or a broader willingness to embrace domestic reforms is unlikely to follow in the near term. Nevertheless, the current controversy could yield positive results in the long run. Beijing's Olympic trials and tribulations could provoke soul searching among China's leaders and demonstrate to them that their hold on domestic stability and the country's continued rise depend on greater transparency and accountability and a broader commitment to human rights. Already, some Chinese bloggers, intellectuals, and journalists, such as Wang Lixiong and Chang Ping, have seized the moment to call for less nationalist rhetoric and more thoughtful engagement of outside criticism. The nationalist outburst has provided them with an opening to ask publicly how Chinese citizens can legitimately attack Western media organizations if their own government does not allow them to watch media outlets such as CNN and the BBC. Similarly, they have used the Olympics as a springboard to discuss the significance of Taiwan's thriving democracy for the mainland's own political future, the need for rethinking China's approach to Tibet, and the desirability of an open press.

Whatever the longer-term implications of the 2008 Olympics, what has transpired thus far bears little resemblance to Beijing's dreams of Olympic glory. Rather than basking in the admiration of the world, China is beset by internal protests and international condemnation. The world is increasingly doubtful that Beijing will reform politically and become a responsible global actor. The Olympics were supposed to put these questions to bed, not raise them all anew.
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[+/-] : No Torch Through Tibet, say NYC Tibetans

No Torch Through Tibet, say NYC Tibetans

New York, June 17, 2008 - As Beijing postponed its Tibet leg of the Olympic torch relay, the Tibetans went ahead with their protest against the Olympic torch here today. Organized by Regional Tibetan Youth Congress, Students for a Free Tibet, Regional Tibetan Women’s Association, New York and New Jersey Tibetan Community and US Tibet Committee, the event marked the 100th day of China’s crackdown in Tibet following March 14th protests in Lhasa and daily protest by Tibetans in New York.


Tibetans and supporters from New York, New Jersey, Boston, and Philadelphia gathered this morning at the Chinese Consulate with Tibetan national flags, banners, placards and leaflets to condemn the Chinese government’s decision to pass the Olympic torch through Tibet. The Tibetans say that the Chinese government is deliberately putting Tibet in the torch route to reaffirm its domination over Tibet by attributing its claim over Tibet to the passage of the torch through Lhasa. The Tibetans also fear that the China would not hesitate to resort to violent crackdown in the event of Tibetans in Tibet protesting the torch relay. Tsering Palden, the president of the RTYC, NY&NJ, told phayul that the 5 organization strongly condemn the Chinese government’s repressive policies in Tibet and that the organizations stand in complete solidarity with the Tibetan people inside Tibet which is locked down since the March crackdown. “We seek the International Olympic Committee’s intervention to remove Tibet from China’s route for the bloody torch relay, “said Palden.


Youngsters dramatizing Tibet leg of the Olympic torch relay as protesters watch, 06/17/08
The organizers said they are gravely concerned about the situation inside Tibet as reports of arrests and killings continue to reach the outside world particularly as China keeps the international media at bay. A banner that read ‘China! Allow Free Media into Tibet’, made rounds in the sky opposite the Chinese Consulate as the Tibetans shouted slogans below.

After an event that featured speeches by the organizers, a political skit by volunteers of Students for a Free Tibet, and slogan raising, the Tibetans walked from the Chinese Consulate to the UN Plaza where another gathering was held. The Tibetans raised slogans against China’s killing of Tibetan protesters in Tibet in the last three months and condemned the Tibet leg of the torch relay due this Saturday. A group of Tibetan youngsters performed a skit depicting Chinese repression in Tibet. The skit arranged by Regional Tibetan Youth Congress dramatized events related to the Olympic torch relay in Tibet and consequent clampdown by Chinese security forces. The event concluded with a march to the Chinese mission where the Tibetans continued to protest vehemently.


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