By Randy Burton
The Star Phoenix, August 09, 2008
http://www.canada.com/saskatoonstarphoenix/news/story.html?id=41847871-d643-41c7-83c9-a52d0997a389
With the formal opening of the Olympic Games, China's Communist government has gotten exactly the kind of coverage it wanted.
The opening ceremonies were tremendous, the television hosts gushed over the spectacle and there was little serious discussion of human rights abuses.
Certainly there has been plenty of coverage of the Communist regime's warts to date, but you have to wonder if by granting China the Games, the International Olympic Committee has given a repressive government licence to continue its ways.
It was supposed to be different. Back in 2001, the International Olympic Committee was optimistic that granting the Games to China would actually improve their human rights record.
In fact, IOC president Jacques Rogge promised that the organization "would act" if promised reforms failed to materialize. Just two weeks ago, Rogge was saying that "for the first time, foreign media will be able to report freely and publish their work freely in China."
In other words, the expectation was that the Olympics would herald a sea change in Chinese affairs, and bring about a new era of openness and freedoms.
Yet precisely the opposite has happened. Instead of easing restrictions, the Communist Chinese regime has cracked down even harder on defenders of human rights. Censorship of websites and new controls on journalistic activities has shown how lightly the Chinese government has taken its own promises.
What's unfolding in Tiananmen Square is a perfect example. The site of the regime's vicious repression of student protests in 1989, the square has become a gathering spot for journalists seeking to interview Chinese citizens for their views on local life.
Keen to avoid any embarrassment, Chinese authorities now demand that reporters apply for a permit 24 hours in advance of any interview they conduct in the square.
This gives the authorities ample opportunity to determine what the story is, who the interviewees might be and thus short-circuit anything that could be embarrassing for the regime.
Already, the government has been blocking Internet access to any site it doesn't happen to like, including the BBC, Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders, among others.
Among those the government would prefer not to be speaking to the media are those who lost family members in the Sichuan earthquake that destroyed thousands of shoddily constructed buildings, including schools that became concrete coffins for hundreds of school children.
Also this week in western China, two Japanese journalists were arrested and beaten by police in the course of reporting on a terrorist attack that killed 16 police officers.
Suppression of a free press is only part of the problem.
According to Amnesty International, the effort to "clean up" Beijing has been used as an excuse to intensify repression of those the regime doesn't like. This includes practitioners of the Falun Gong religious group and anyone who so much as operates an unlicensed taxi. Miscreants are rounded up and subjected to "re-education through labour," a Communist term for prison. Those in re-education are not allowed a lawyer or any kind of due judicial process.
Indeed, several lawyers who offered to act for Tibetans arrested in connection with protests there earlier this year lost their licences. An Amnesty International report details numerous such cases, including that of Yuan Weijing, the wife of a jailed activist. Even though she has done nothing, a cadre of hired goons physically prevent her from leaving her house to get a toothache treated.
Apologists for the regime will say get over it. They will say China's record on all these issues has improved greatly over the last few years and the policy of engagement is actually beneficial.
And if you don't like it, you can go and protest in a specially designed "protest park," on the outskirts of Beijing, miles from any of the official venues. That is, of course, if the authorities approve of your protest plan and the slogans you intend to utter. So far, not a single group has been able to make the cut.
What has happened is that the regime has deftly turned any criticism of government policies into a nationalistic rallying point for the Chinese people. Thus any mention of human rights from foreign observers is interpreted to be somehow anti-Chinese.
This is no accident.
The end result is that the Communist regime has already won the political battle of these Olympics, despite calls from U.S. President George W. Bush that the Chinese need to do more.
Beyond mentioning the fact that they have not held up their end of the original bargain, any real "action" from the IOC has been missing.
And really, what can it do? Given that the Games have already begun, it's not as if the IOC can dictate the terms of engagement at this point.
The Communists essentially suckered the IOC into giving them the Games based on a series of promises that they had no intention of keeping.
By standing by mutely, the international community is essentially giving its tacit approval to the regime's heavy-handed rule.