2008 Beijing Games Human Rights News

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.

The massive scale of the opening ceremony won China its first gold medal, observers agree. Even people who are usually critical, such as Hong Kong journalist Joyce Hor-Chung Lau, were impressed by the exploits of filmmaker Zhang Yimou and his cast of thousands. The mood was so dream-like inside the Bird’s Nest, said the BBC’s Beijing correspondent, James Reynolds, that the wildest rumours were circulating during the ceremony, including the absurd idea that a highly-trained panda was going to light the Olympic flame.

The organising committee nonetheless nearly had an incident on its hands when dozens of journalists were barred from entering the stadium on the grounds that, although they had press accreditation, they did not have tickets, a witness told this blog. The problem was quickly resolved but it gave rise to a little white lie in China Daily, which claimed apologies were given at a news conference which in fact never took place.

And then, as often happens when tens of thousands gather and billions of others are looking on, some people had to pay the price for all this global glamour. The “All roads lead to China” blog reports that the games have placed such a demand on China’s power grid that some provinces have been subject to restrictions and even blackouts.

And the nightmare continues for those who have the misfortune not to be part of the Party’s marvellous world. We have learned, for example, of the disturbing disappearance of dissident Hu Jia’s wife, who had been under house arrest in their small apartment in a Beijing suburb since Hu’s imprisonment.

Meanwhile, the games continue without incident, or almost. Christina Chan, a young Canadian activist of Chinese origin, was expelled from the Olympic equestrian venue in Hong Kong when she displayed a Canadian flag and then tried to unfurl a Tibetan flag as the competitors entered the venue.

Despite the worldwide acclaim, the Chinese authorities are still on high alert. Journalist Josh Gerstein even reports that plain-clothes police were going around the Olympic press centre with strange machines in their hands looking for the http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=28100Reporters Without Borders pirate radio station’s phantom transmitters.

Activists of all kinds have started to spoil the party in the run-up to the opening ceremony, the government’s choreographed prologue to the big Olympic festivity.

Reporters Without Borders unveiled its CYBER-DEMONSTRATION on the eve of the big bash, inviting netizens from all over the world to come to a special website to express their disapproval of the macabre comedy with a forced smile being played out in China. The venue is a virtual version of the Bird’s Nest, the Olympic stadium that is supposed to be the architectural star of these games. As we cannot do this in Beijing, let’s do it in a parallel Beijing, while we wait for the virtual to become real.

In the morning, two Britons and two Americans from Students for a Free Tibet hoisted a banner saying “One Dream, One World, Free Tibet” on a pylon near the Bird’s Nest. Twelve minutes later: police, handcuffs, prison, as the saying goes.

In the early afternoon, a group of US Catholics staged a sit-in beneath a banner saying “Jesus is King” in Tiananmen Square in protest against a bunch of impious things in China such as the one-child policy and abortion.

As Beijing’s streets have been turned into movie sets for the police, activists staged several events in hotel rooms, AFP reports. It clearly got crowded in these tiny air-conditioned rooms, what with journalists, police, zealous hotel employees and organisers...

Unfortunately for them, some people were unable to join the party. Reuters reports Chinese pro-democracy activists being turned back for the past week at Hong Kong airport. Blacklist, aircraft, return to exile, thank you for remaining silent.

As for the crews of the South Korean TV station SBS, they have been banned from the opening ceremony for filming the rehearsals for this grandiose event. Around 100 other TV stations broadcast the footage they shot, but that doesn’t matter.

Order reigns, if you don’t look at the disorder.