BEIJING, April 21, 2008 -- Just as the August Chink-O-Lympics is
doomed to abject FAILURE, so are the flimsy, vague, and none-too-
serious agreements made to the IOC in order to gain approval for
staging the games in Olde Browne Beijing.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao told a group of visiting Sudanese re****ters
here that China would make good on all the promises.
"We will show world," he said through interpreters, "we are honest
brokers for freedom. And we are not thugs and goons as evil CNN in
America call us. Just because we from time to time are compelled to
eliminate some what we call "non-players" in places like Tibet, does
not mean we are not kind and thoughtful people. So, do not be afraid
to attend Olympics. Bring your gas masks, bug spray, and water
purification tablets -- and enjoy yourselves! We promise to do our
best not to kill or injure you."
----------------------
"China Falls Short on Vows for Olympics"
"Long Way to Go' On Rights, Pollution And Press Freedom"
By Jill Drew and Maureen Fan
Wa****ngton Post Foreign Service
Monday, April 21, 2008; A01
BEIJING, April 20 -- China has spent billions of dollars to fulfill
its commitment to stage a grand Olympics. Athletes will compete in
world-class stadiums. New highways and train lines crisscross Beijing.
China built the world's largest air****t terminal to welcome an
expected 500,000 foreign visitors. Thousands of newly planted trees
and dozens of colorful "One World, One Dream" billboards line the main
roads of a spruced-up capital. The security system has impressed the
FBI and Interpol.
But beneath the ****mmer and behind the slogan, China is under
criticism for suppressing Tibetan protests, sealing off large ****tions
of the country to foreign re****ters, harassing and jailing dissidents
and not doing enough to curb air pollution. It has not lived up to a
pledge in its Olympic action plan, released in 2002, to "be open in
every aspect," and a constitutional amendment adopted in 2004 to
recognize and protect human rights has not ****elded government critics
from arrest.
The two realities show that when China had to build something new to
fulfill expectations, it has largely delivered. But in areas that
touch China's core interests, Olympic pledges come second.
"To ensure a successful Olympic Games, the government did make some
technical and strategic efforts to improve the environment, human
rights and press freedom. They did make some progress. But in these
three areas, there's a long, long way to go," said Cheng Yizhong, an
editor who tracks China's Olympic preparations.
With the Games less than four months away, the International Olympic
Committee is scrambling to nail down specifics of how China will treat
criticism of its actions during the event. Pressed this month, IOC
President Jacques Rogge clarified that athletes would be allowed to
speak freely in Beijing's Olympic venues, calling it an "absolute"
human right.
"I can't help but feel cynical about all this," said David
Wallechinsky, an Olympic historian, who said the IOC should have been
more forceful with China earlier. "What are they going to do, take
away the Games?"
Human Rights
China's commitment to improve human rights has always been vague. Its
strongest public statement came from Beijing's mayor, the head of the
country's bidding team, on the eve of the IOC vote in July 2001 to
select the host city for the 2008 Olympics. Awarding the Games to
Beijing, said Liu Qi, would "benefit the further development of our
human rights cause."
Rogge says China made a moral commitment to improve human rights, but
did not sign a contractual agreement. In 2002, he told re****ters he
was convinced the Games would improve human rights in China. The IOC,
Rogge said, would confer regularly with Amnesty International, a human
rights group, to monitor China's progress.
T. Kumar, Amnesty's Asia advocacy director, said meetings did take
place, but mostly between low-level staff members of the two
organizations. He said the IOC did not solicit ideas about how to
press the Chinese on the problems Amnesty was raising. Two weeks ago,
an IOC official publicly dismissed an Amnesty re****t that said China's
crackdown on activists had intensified because of the Olympics.
"The IOC silence all these years is one of the reasons China felt no
need to improve human rights in a meaningful way," Kumar said. "The
IOC behaved in a very indifferent way."
China rejects global anger over its human rights record. Lifting 400
million people out of extreme poverty in recent decades, as the World
Bank re****ts the government has done, is an overarching human rights
achievement, Chinese researchers say.
"It is most im****tant to compare human rights to the past to see if
there is progress, not to compare it with other countries," said Luo
Yanhau, professor of international studies at Peking University. Even
with a fast-rising economy, she said, about one-tenth of the
population still lives on $1 a day or less, according to 2006 World
Bank statistics. "We have to fulfill the right to subsistence and
development," she said.
In the past decade, China has passed laws to better protect the rights
of the disabled, elderly, women, employees and migrant workers.
Although enforcement of those laws is often lacking, rights experts
say, the government has allowed a broader public discourse about these
areas.
Li ****'an, a history professor at Renmin University in Beijing, said
China has fulfilled its commitment to Olympic officials on human
rights, arguing that the country would not be as stable if people did
not have rights.
China, which denies that widespread protests by Tibetans for more
autonomy are a human rights issue, recently rejected a request by U.N.
human rights experts to travel to Tibet. Chinese President Hu Jintao
said last weekend that Tibet "is not an ethnic problem, not a
religious problem, nor a human rights problem." In his first public
comments on the issue, Hu said, "It is a problem either to safeguard
national unification or to split the motherland."
Press Freedom
Wang Wei, executive vice president of the Beijing Olympic Organizing
Committee, told re****ters in 2001 that the news media would have
"complete freedom to re****t on anything when they come to China."
Wen Jiabao, the Chinese premier, last year signed tem****ary
regulations to allow foreign journalists to travel domestically
without advance permission until the Games are over. Re****ters would
still need permits to travel to Tibet, officials said, although that
was not specifically mentioned in the regulations.
But recently foreign journalists have been detained while re****ting
sensitive stories and escorted by police out of several provinces that
border Tibet, which is closed to foreign journalists and tourists.
Chinese officials say foreign journalists are being excluded from the
areas for their safety. Meanwhile, government spokesmen have accused
international news media of biased re****ting and some foreign
journalists have received death threats.
"If there were no Tibetan issue, the Chinese government would follow
their promises very well," said Zhan Jiang, journalism dean at China
Youth University for Political Sciences in Beijing. "But with the
Tibetan issue, they will not keep their commitment."
Chinese writers can publish on a broader range of topics today than in
years past, domestic media watchers say, but criticizing the
government or the Communist Party can still mean time in jail or a
labor camp. Dissident writer Hu Jia was sentenced recently to 3 1/2
years for subverting state authority by giving interviews to foreign
media and posting articles on the Internet that compared the Communist
Party to the Mafia and called for greater autonomy for Tibet.
"China is suffering from its policy of suppressing press freedom,"
said Cheng, the editor who tracks Olympic preparations. He was editor
in chief of Southern Metropolis Daily before he was arrested for
publi****ng information in 2003 about the severity of the deadly SARS
epidemic. He was cleared of corruption charges and is now deputy
publisher of S****ts Illustrated China.
"The government is suffering from its own propaganda system, which has
been rigid for a long time," Cheng said. "China is lifting a rock only
to drop it on its own feet."
Environment
The Olympics have been used both within China and internationally as
an urgent prod to clean up pollution. "Deliver Clean Energy Towards a
Harmonious World," declares a giant billboard in downtown Beijing.
China has spent about $20 billion over the past decade to clean up
Beijing's air, government media have re****ted. Du Shaozhong, deputy
director of Beijing's Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau, said
the government has shut down 200 heavily polluting factories since
1998. Another 19 heavy polluters will be forced to reduce emissions
between now and the Aug. 8 start of the Games. Work must stop on
construction sites starting July 20, Du said, and Beijing has warned
motorists that sometime this summer private cars will be allowed on
the road only on alternating days.
China had pledged that by 2008, measurements of carbon monoxide,
nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide would meet World Health
Organization standards and airborne particle density would be reduced
to the level of major cities in developed countries. But the IOC said
last month that Beijing had so far met only WHO 2005 interim
guidelines, which are significantly less restrictive.
"Official data during the Aug. 8 to Aug. 24 Olympic period indicates
air quality was actually worse in 2006 and 2007 than in 2000 and
2001," Steven Q. Andrews, an independent environmental consultant,
said in an e-mail interview. His analysis of August 2007 data found
that Beijing's air registered 123 micrograms of particulate matter per
cubic meter, more than double the WHO guideline of 50 micrograms per
cubic meter for short-term exposure.
Du said there are contingency plans to take more stringent steps if
needed to improve air quality during the Games. "We will do everything
possible to honor the promise," he said.
[Staff researcher Robert E. Thomason in Wa****ngton and researchers
Zhang Jie and Liu Songjie in Beijing contributed to this re****t.]
http://www.wa****ngtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/20/AR2008042002044.html
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