China’s Olympian Human Rights Deficit

English version of Phelim Kine's op-ed "China's Olympisch gebrek aan mensenrechten," published in the Dutch magazine Idee (July 2008).

http://www.d66.nl/9359000/1/j9vvhc6cwgbojx9/vhwolx1i2sj4

The Olympic torch relay passed through Lhasa on June 21 with precious little hint of respect for the “fundamental ethical values” enshrined in the Olympic Charter. Instead of cheering sports fans, the streets were filled with thousands of police in riot gear surveilling the hand-picked crowds and the foreign journalists flown in specially to cover the event.

These controls are just the latest evidence of how the March 14-15 violence in the Tibetan capital has prompted the most systematic and prolonged crackdown on human rights in China since the June 1989 Tiananmen Massacre. The government broke up peaceful demonstrators criticizing Chinese rule in Tibet, after which violent protests erupted, which in turn gave the government a rationale to invoke when it kicked the foreign media out of the region and launched an intensive security operation involving hundreds of thousands of armed police and military.

Rather than a pre-Olympics easing of tight controls on freedom of expression, the Chinese government is using the final weeks ahead the start of the Games on August 8, 2008 to intensify a stranglehold on those who challenge the officially dictated “harmonious society.”

Despite 2001 pledges that hosting the 2008 Games would boost development of “democracy and human rights,” the Chinese government, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the majority of foreign governments have failed to adequately address the mounting number of well-documented Olympics-related human rights abuses.

Targets of the government campaign against freedom of expression have included critics of building standards in the area hit by the devastating May 12 Sichuan earthquake. Zeng Hongling, a retired school teacher , was reportedly detained on June 9 in Chengdu, Sichuan on charges of “inciting subversion” after posting three essays online alleging shoddy construction in the collapse of hundreds of schools in the May 12 quake. Huang Qi, a veteran dissident and founder of Web site www.64tianwang.com, which dedicates itself to publicizing alleged human rights abuses which occur across China, was detained on March 10 in Chengdu for allegedly possessing state secrets shortly after posting the details of Zeng Hongling’s arrest.

In April, Chinese human rights activist Hu Jia was sentenced to 3.5 years in prison for the “crime” of speaking out publicly about the tightening chokehold on dissent ahead of the Games. Mr. Hu’s activist wife Zeng Jinyan and their seven-month-old daughter have been under house arrest since May 18, 2007. Mr. Hu joins other Olympic dissidents in jail. These include Yang Chulin, detained in July 2007 for his involvement in a petition “We Want Human Rights, Not the Olympics” signed by farmers protesting land seizures; Ye Guozhou, serving a four-year prison sentence for organizing protests against Olympics-related forced evictions; and Wang Ling, sentenced to 15 months of “re-education” in November 2007 for opposing demolition of her property for an Olympics-related project.

Last month several lawyers, including Teng Biao, Zhang Jiankang and Jiang Tianyong lost their licenses to practice law as an official reprisal for publicly offering to defend Tibetan suspects arrested in the wake of the Lhasa riots in March.Teng Biao first became a target for official punishment due to a letter he co-wrote with Hu Jia in September 2007. The letter was a stinging indictment of the Chinese government’s failure to deliver on its promises to the IOC to develop human rights in China ahead of the 2008 Olympics. “When you come to the Olympic Games in Beijing…you may not know that the flowers, smiles, harmony and prosperity are built on a base of grievances, tears, imprisonment, torture and blood,” they wrote.

Despite Olympics-related temporary regulations granting foreign journalists expanded media freedoms, those correspondents also have good reason to be fearful. A Chinese state media campaign in late March against alleged “western media bias” in Tibet-related reporting resulted in at least 10 correspondents receiving anonymous death threats. The Foreign Ministry has so thus far declined to investigate these incidents. The initial openness offered to the foreign media in Sichuan following the May 12 earthquake quickly waned. By June 2, the Foreign Correspondents Club of China (FCCC) had documented at least eight incidents in which foreign journalists have been harassed or detained while trying to report from the earthquake zone.ssed or detained while
trying to report from the earthquake zone.

The Chinese government has calculated—correctly so far—that the international community’s concern for good trade relations will mute any serious public criticism of the worsening human rights situation ahead of the Games. Yet its modest improvements on issues, such as improving the review of death sentences or appointing a more visible spokesperson on Sudan policy, are proof positive that vocal international pressure can motivate it to act meaningfully on human rights issues.

It is not too late for foreign governments and the International Olympic Committee to raise their voices against such Olympics-related abuses and have impact. The IOC in particular should publicly protest these Olympics-related human rights abuses and demand that the Chinese government fulfill the human rights pledges it made to win the right to host the 2008 Games. National Olympic Committees and foreign governments who will send thousands of athletes, journalists and spectators to the Games should likewise speak out about Olympics-related rights abuses that tarnish the principles of the Olympic Charter, and vigorously defend the right of athletes, journalists and spectators to free expression.

Foreign heads of state, including Dutch Prime Minister Balkenende, who has accepted invitations to attend the Beijing Games, should make an improved human rights climate the minimum price of their attendance in August. A failure to do so can only give tacit approval to the Chinese government’s thuggish tactics.

Those moves are no panacea China’s many human rights challenges. But honest public and private expressions of concern about them by IOC officials and leaders of foreign governments attending the Games may yet help make the 2008 Beijing Olympics an event which both China and the international community can be justly proud of.

Phelim Kine is an Asia-based researcher for Human Rights Watch.