2008 Beijing Games Human Rights News

The question of the day for the journalists covering the Beijing Olympic Games was basically quite simple. Er, why is there a tank parked outside the press centre?

No one would dispute the right to ask this question. And even to put it to Wang Wei, the Chinese organising committee’s imperturbable vice-president and spokesman for the games. His answer was yet again carved in the finest wood from which language is made: “I haven’t seen anything. I don’t know who took this decision. It does not come under my responsibility, but it must have been a security measure designed to protect the media. There is nothing to fear. There will be no negative impact on media access to the press centre.” Well, then. Feeling better already.

This exchange was an amusing parenthesis to today’s news conference. Nonetheless, this daily ceremony is getting more and more short-tempered. The journalists, especially British and American ones and Agence France Presse’s correspondents, are getting tired of the smooth-as-polished-oak replies from the Chinese representatives and the transparent readiness of IOC spokesperson Giselle Davis to always accommodate her Chinese hosts.

A bit of acrimony woke up the media centre this morning. Radio Free Asia bureau chief Jill Ku Martin wanted BOCOG and the IOC to explain why – as Reporters Without Borders has reported – one of her journalists (an American of Tibetan origin) is being systematically denied a visa. The reply she finally got from Davis was: “The problem is being looked at.” But to get it, she had to jump up furiously after being ignored by the little Chinese assistant who takes the microphone to the journalists.

But this episode was exceptional, and the daily press conference sometimes sounds like dialogue from a Samuel Beckett play. To the question, “Why did the Propaganda Department publish a list of 21 instructions for Chinese journalists covering the games,” Wang replied, “The Chinese media have a right to provide coverage of the games.” Beckett or Groucho Marx, it’s hard to decide.

A veteran Olympic Games reporter in Beijing said: “We knew where we stood in Moscow in 1980 and we were aware we were being lied to. Here it is all being done very cleverly, with the IOC’s active complicity. Giselle Davis has a walk-on part. She gives very short replies or mutters asides, as if she were bored to death.”

He added: “The IOC has a lot to answer for as regards this poisonous climate as it must have known what would happen and it shamelessly turns a blind eye to anything that could disrupt the Olympic calm and the business that goes with it...”