2008 Beijing Games Human Rights News

For the past few days, the blogosphere has been abuzz with a controversy that says a lot about the level of exasperation among those who cannot quite believe in the absolutely harmonious face China has tried to project to the world during the Olympic Games.

What is the real age of Chinese gymnast He Kexin, who won an individual gold and a team gold and who is the darling of a nation that has garnered more gold medals than any other in “its” games? The Chinese Olympic Committee insists she is 16. Doubts were raised in the international press (and were even mentioned by the Chinese press) without anything really decisive being reported. But now a sceptical and inquisitive netizen had demonstrated, by means of documents unearthed online, that she is only 14, making her ineligible to participate in the Olympics.

The Times reports today that the International Olympic Committee has, somewhat reluctantly, decided that this troublesome question has to be investigated.

Reporters Without Borders is releasing three Chinese police documents on official strategy towards the foreign media. While the aim of these documents is to ensure that the thousands of accredited foreign journalists in Beijing are free to conduct interviews, they also ask the police to prevent non-accredited journalists from working and above all to investigate the Chinese who talk to the press. This suggests there could be reprisals after the games, when all the journalists have gone.

Dated 25 July and entitled "Four directives for handling foreign journalists," the first document asks the police not to block their camera lenses (1), not to damage their equipment (2), not to confiscate their memory cards (3) and not to investigate when they are involved in minor offences (4).

The second document is entitled "Eight directives for not intervening when a foreign journalist is interviewing a Chinese." It tells police not to intervene if the journalist is accredited (1), if the journalist is accredited but is not asking political questions (2), if the person agrees to be interviewed (3), if the journalist asks about a third country (4), at news conferences given by foreign organisations that have permission (5), if the journalist is asking about sensitive matters but the interviewee is not causing people to gather and disrupt public order (6), if the interviewee talks about subjects such as Tibet, Xinjiang, Taiwan and Falun Gong or criticises the Party or government but is not behaving outrageously (7), if a journalist photographs or films policemen without disrupting their work (8).

As regards point 7, the directive tells the police to "speak to the interviewee in accordance with Chinese legislation and to follow and monitor the journalist." There have been more than ten cases of Chinese being arrested after trying to alert international public opinion to abuses they have suffered. Two Beijing women in their late 70s were sentenced to a year of reeducation through work on 17 August for asking permission to demonstrate during the games, while Zhang Wei, a former resident of Beijing’s Qianmen district, was arrested on 9 August after complaining to foreign journalists about the way she was rehoused.

Reporters Without Borders has seen that, during protests by Christian or pro-Tibet foreigners in Beijing, the authorities prefer to let police disguised as young patriots or members of civilian surveillance groups intervene rather than directly arrest the demonstrators.

At the same time, the public security department’s campaign to intimidate Beijing human rights activists before the Olympic Games enabled the authorities to sideline these spokesmen for social, religious and political demands. More than 40 of them were put under house arrest, forced to leave Beijing or forced to go into hiding for fear of reprisals.

The third document is an analysis by the Criminal Affairs Bureau of three incidents involving pro-Tibet activists, Christians and a delinquent. Directives tell the police that the priority is to carry out a thorough investigation and avoid bad publicity. The Criminal Affairs Bureau recommends arresting foreign demonstrators and deporting them as quickly as possible. The police are told to do everything possible to "depoliticise" their actions by stressing the public order consequences to the public.

Point 4 of the directives tells the Beijing police to deal with "religious cases as quickly as possible." They are told to "keep the crowd at a distance, devise all sorts of ploys to defuse the situation and immediately inform the Religious Affairs Department."

Read the latest entry on BBC correspondent James Reynolds' blog.

Two old ladies – Wu Dianyuan, 79, and Wang Xiuying, 77 – asked five times if they could take advantage of the now famous “protest pens” which the authorities created for the duration of the Olympic Games. Forcibly evicted from their Beijing homes in 2001, they wanted to seize on this limited window of opportunity to finally make their protests heard. But each time they were refused. And then they were questioned for 10 hours. The verdict was one year of “reeducation through work.” In view of their age and health, the sentence has been waived for the time being. But it could be implemented at the least sign of “trouble”. As former French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin said, “China has left the road of dictatorship.”

Happily for them, the International Olympic Committee and the Beijing Organising Committee (BOCOG) will not have to face the embarrassment of being forced to comment on this sentence. The international media in Beijing have been astonished to learn that the daily news conferences by this Olympic duo ended last weekend. The one scheduled for Sunday (17 August) was cancelled at the last minute. It is now widely acknowledged that Wang Wei was fed up with all the questions from the English-language media about human rights violations and the cheating at the opening ceremony, and that he did a deal with the IOC – an end to the stressful press conferences in exchange for instructions to the security services to try to “ease up” on the international press and the foreign “trouble-makers.”