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.

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...”

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.

Members of Reporters Without Borders today broadcast "Radio Without Borders," China's only independent FM radio station, in Beijing just hours before the start of the Olympic Games opening ceremony. In a programme lasting 20 minutes, Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Robert Ménard and Chinese human rights activists called on the Chinese government to respect free speech.

"The Chinese authorities refused to issue visas to ten of our members but this has not stopped us from making ourselves heard in Beijing by means of a clandestine radio broadcast using miniaturised FM transmitters and antennas," Ménard said. "Reporters Without Borders devised and carried out this protest in a spirit of resistance against state control of the media."

The press freedom organisation added: "This is the first non-state radio station to have broadcast in China since the Communist Party took power in 1949. Only international Chinese-language radio stations broadcasting on the short wave would be able to break this news and information monopoly, but they are jammed by the authorities."

The Radio Without Borders broadcast began at 08:08 local time on 08/08/08, exactly 12 hours before the start of the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games. The programme, in English, French and Mandarin, was heard in on 104.4 FM in different districts of the Chinese capital.

Listen to the program in English :



In French :



In mandarin :


In his introduction, Ménard described the broadcast as a "gesture of defiance towards the Chinese authorities, who are still keeping dozens and dozens of journalists and Internet users in prison." Addressing the authorities, Ménard said: "Despite everything, there are people who are going to be able to speak out about things you don't want the public to hear, in the very heart of Beijing. Regardless of the measures you take, you will not get rid of free speech."

Ménard then urged the Chinese authorities to release prisoners of conscience and stop jamming the frequencies used by international radio stations broadcasting in Chinese. "You banned us from going to Beijing, you expelled us from China. But despite all that, we are here, making our voice heard peacefully, in a completely non-violent fashion. It is a way of saying censorship just won't work."

The broadcast included interviews with Chinese human rights activists who have found refuge abroad. A former journalist talked about the censorship and self-censorship that is imposed on her colleagues still in China. A human rights activist described the crackdown on Chinese activists in the run-up to the Olympics.

A former political prisoner described the appalling conditions in which he was held. "External pressure is essential to improve the situation of political prisoners," Yang Jianli said. Finally the director of Boxun, a US-based, Chinese-language website that is still blocked in China, talked about what motivates the site's volunteer contributors inside China who, despite the risks, post reports on the social and political situation.

The hospitality of the Chinese authorities during the Olympic Games has its limits, especially as regards Beijing’s central square. The municipal government announced this morning that “Chinese and foreign journalists are asked to request an appointment by telephone with the Tiananmen Square Administrative Committee” if they are bold enough to want to film or conduct interviews in the square. This is a violation of the rules that the authorities themselves issued at the beginning of the year and the commitments (the what?) that were given to the IOC. But then again, this is not the first time the Communist Party has broken a promise. How will the authorities react when those cheeky foreign TV stations try to film the start of the marathon under Chairman Mao’s photo?

Anyway, the paramilitary police is always there when foreigners need to be given a taste of China’s new glory. Two Japanese reporters learned this bitter lesson on 4 August in Kashgar, in the northwestern province of Xinjiang, says Reporters Without Borders, which fears more incidents of this kind, “for which the IOC will share the blame because it took so long to request guarantees for the safety of the media.” But that seems to be the least of the IOC’s concerns. The most important thing, it keeps saying, is the quality of Beijing’s hotels.