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.”

The Beijing Olympic Games are now into their second and last week. And the daily news, both sports results and political incidents, have reached a cruise speed that is hypnotic.

Even the official cant now seems routine. Such as the statement made by a Beijing municipal public security official to the New China news agency giving a breakdown of the requests for permission to demonstrate in one of the three city parks earmarked for this purpose. It was, to say the least, abstract. A total of 77 requests had been made by 149 people, the unidentified official said. Most were linked to the “right to work, health issues or social disputes.” You have to read the statement to get the flavour of the delicious bureaucratic jargon used to explain why and how 74 of the requests were refused.

As for sports, a sad day for everyone was dominated by the withdrawal of Chinese 100 metres hurdles champion Liu Xiang because of an injury. Scant attention was paid to the fifth protest by the US group Students for a Free Tibet, which managed to hang a gigantic banner on the facade of the headquarters of state-run China Central Television. And you could safely bet a fortune that no one noticed that the International Olympic Committee ordered the expulsion of Senegal’s athletics coach from the Olympic Games and from China for brandishing a banner saying “Friendship first, then competition” during the opening ceremony. It is true that the level of violence in the message was exceptional.

Patriotic fervour cannot fix everything and the scale of the Olympic Games opening ceremony was such that some adjustments to reality were needed.

The Chinese public television live broadcasts that are not quite live, the gigantic firework displays that were done on a computer, the pretty girl lip-synching the Ode to the Motherland sung by a less pretty girl in the wings, the hushed-up case of a dancer left paralysed by a three-metre fall during rehearsal... Each of these little subterfuges carried out to impress the visitors had its own little story, tragedy and symbolism. The latest little adjustment, while not exceptional in major public performances, has a symbolic significance that will be appreciated. The 56 child extras representing the 56 ethnic groups that make up China turn out to have all been members of the Han ethnic majority disguised as an Uyghur, Tibetan, Mongol and so on.

This was revealed by British journalist Jane Macartney of The Times of London during the daily news conference. The only reaction she got from Chinese Organising Committee vice-president Wang Wei (the man who had failed to notice the tank parked outside the press centre at the beginning of the week) was an angry reference to the “nit-picking” foreign media.

The episode recalls the exploit of Catherine the Great’s war minister, Grigori Potemkin, who had cardboard facade villages built along the road when she visited newly-conquered provinces in order to adjust reality to his interest and reassure the uneasy empress.

Care has been taken since the start of the games to keep the “trouble-makers” away. For example, US speed-skater Joey Cheek, a gold medal-winner in the 2006 Turin winter games, found that his visa had been withdrawn by the Chinese embassy on the eve of his departure last week for Beijing. Although he was not given any explanation, it was clearly linked to the fact that he is the founder of “Team Darfur,” a coalition of 72 athletes that has been urging China to stop supporting the Sudanese regime responsible for the genocide in Darfur.

Meanwhile, as long appearances are maintained, everything is fine, Mr. Potemkin.

Chen Dashan is a grieving father who cannot get to the bottom of his 20-year-old daughter’s mysterious death while she was in the army. A military band conductor, she died suddenly and inexplicably after a concert in 2006. The last time he saw her, she was a lifeless body in the back of an ambulance. Her superiors claimed she was the victim of a heart attack but the authorities never paid the required compensation to her family. Her father suspects a cover-up and their indifference has only compounded his grief.

This was why Chen filed several requests for permission to demonstrate during the Olympic Games in the parks that the Chinese authorities have supposedly earmarked for public protests. “The pressure on the government is very strong, with the games, but it will be impossible afterwards,” he told a Wall Street Journal reporter. But his requests were all denied. So last Sunday, 10 August, he went to Tiananmen Square to distribute leaflets explaining his campaign on behalf of his daughter.

AFP Video has done a report on the difficulties of demonstrating in Beijing, and it shows this ordinary, 53-year-old father from northern China confronting an icy police officer. After distributing a few leaflets, Chen was led away. Since then, he has not been answering his telephone.

Despite the daily attempts by the IOC and Chinese organisers to varnish reality, coverage of the Olympic Games is beginning to turn into a trial of strength between the foreign press and the Party’s legion of little soldiers, including policemen and police spies.

As Reporters Without Borders has related, British journalist John Ray of London-based Independent Television News was manhandled and restrained by the police for 20 minutes today while his cameraman, Ben England, was roughly pushed away. Why? Because they were filming pro-Tibet activists unfurling a “Free Tibet” banner less than 1 kilometre from the Olympic stadium. The Foreign Correspondents Club of China stepped in, demanding an apology from the Chinese authorities. The Chinese organising committee says there will be an “investigation”. As for the IOC, it remains to be seen what wall of ice it will erect in response to the incident.

Would Students for a Free Tibet and the journalists interested in covering their protest have had more luck in the official “Protest Areas” designated by the Chinese authorities? You wouldn’t think so after reading the City Weekend website’s delightful report on these areas. Particularly good is the bit at the end listing the conditions under which one can protest “freely” – as it were. Far from the humour of this little trip to the land of lies, Human Rights Watch has a report about the ordinary Chinese citizens who had the guts to request permission to protest, and were all refused. One of them, Ji Sizun, even paid for his boldness with his freedom. The Chinese organising committee had not yet reacted officially. As for the IOC, it remains to be seen what wall of ice it will erect in response to the incident.

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...”

The notebooks of several Chinese journalists were confiscated by police at a press conference on Sunday given by the family of an American tourist killed the day before. An Associated Press reporter asked the Chinese organisers and the IOC about this at the daily press conference on Monday.

BOCOG gave its standard reply to an embarrassing question: “Chinese laws must be obeyed. Ask the police. It’s nothing to do with us.” IOC spokesperson Giselle Davis said very diplomatically she was “not aware of this, I will investigate.” You want to bet on it…?

Everyone agrees the Games are all about image and the Chinese government knows this.

The state-run CCTV was careful not to show the opening ceremony live, once again showing up the IOC with impunity, as we saw on the "Aujourd'hui la Chine" ("China Today") website.

When the inflexible IOC, an expert in washing its hands of matters, was asked about this by a foreign reporter, it referred the media to CCTV. Chinese living in the US protested strongly against the 12-hour delay in broadcasting the ceremony by the US network NBC, which wanted, thanks to the time difference with China, to draw the maximum audience. But there was no fuss about the 30-second delay in broadcasting the Brazil-Belgium football match on 7 August. Chinese officials said that was a measure to combat hooliganism.

No image was spared, especially during celebration of the national spirit. The British paper the Daily Telegraph reported on Monday that the pictures of huge footsteps in the skies of Beijing, which amazed the world during the opening ceremony, were prepared in advance by computers and broadcast in the Bird’s Nest stadium and by the world’s TV stations as if they were live. The masters of illusion are very good at this kind of thing.

Other images were more modest and less global but still noteworthy. The pictures of 300 immigrant workers who worked on the Olympic site (and who were then asked to return at once to their homes in the countryside so as not to pollute the heady Games atmosphere with their presence) were printed on clay bricks by young photographer Wen Fang and exhibited at Beijing’s Paris-Beijing art gallery, recalling Emperor Qin Shi Huang’s anonymous terracotta army.

More violent – and less tolerated by the authorities who don’t want to see even a glimpse of a Tibetan flag – is the film Leaving Fear Behind, made by Tibetans and showing the isolation and distress in their country.