China Celebrated the Olympics One-Year Countdown In Grand Style In Tiananmen Square But Press Freedom Issues Were Shot Across Its Bow, Too, Warning What Will Come If No Improvement Over The Next 12 Months

Philip M. Stone August 10, 2007

No one could help but be impressed with the opulent celebration in Tiananmen Square that China held this week to mark the one-year countdown to the Beijing Olympic Games scheduled to start on the luckiest date possible in Chinese folklore, 08-08-08 at 08:08 PM.

But spoiling the celebrations somewhat were criticisms and demonstrations from press freedom  groups that although China has relaxed some rules for foreign journalists it’s going to have to do a whole lot more within the next 12 months. If it doesn’t those press freedom and human rights bodies have the muscle to seriously embarrass the country that is investing some $40 billion on these Olympic Games to show China as a modern, vibrant nation.

The Chinese view, as expressed by Jiang Xiaou of the Beijing Organizing Committee, is that the committee “welcomes reporters from around the world to objectively, fairly, and comprehensively report on the Olympic preparation work. We welcome even more constructive criticism on faults and problems, but we absolutely oppose the politicization of the Olympics, as this does not accord with the Olympic spirit.”

Indeed he had some support on that from none other than Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) who made the rounds of the various 24-hour cable news networks broadcasting live from Beijing this week with the message that while the IOC won’t be shy in bringing up issues that affect the Games directly, the IOC is not in the business of politicizing the Games, either.

Because of the IOC’s reluctance to interfere in domestic politics, Paul Steiger, the board chairman of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), met Thursday in Beijing with IOC Communications Director Giselle Davies, expressing concern that eased restrictions on foreign reporters, which went into effect in January, had not been extended to Chinese journalists, and that the IOC and China were falling far short in their pledges to ensure full press freedom during the Games.

“The new rules put into effect earlier this year are a big step forward. Their implementation is a work in progress to be followed closely as we move toward Games time,” Davies told Steiger. “The IOC is working hard to ensure that the organizers address the reporting needs of all accredited journalists covering the Games,” she said.

”I am pleased to learn that the IOC regards as important to the success of the Games that all journalists, domestic and foreign, will have the freedoms necessary to do their job,” Steiger said after the meeting. “We will watch closely for indications of further progress.”

The CPJ had released a report in Beijing Tuesday that complained China has failed to follow through on pledges to increase media freedom for the 2008 Games. When the IOC awarded the Games to Beijing in 2001, the IOC said China had assured it that conditions for journalists would meet international standards. The promises made by China and the IOC did not distinguish between foreign and Chinese press, CPJ said.

Though China lifted some restrictions on foreign journalists in January 2007, the CPJ claims that many of those foreign journalists believe conditions have not improved significantly. And the new rules do not apply to Chinese journalists. In fact, since China was awarded the Games in 2001, central authorities under President Hu Jintao have increased restrictions on the domestic media, the CPJ charged. China continues to hold the dubious distinction of holding at least 29 journalists in jail, the most of any country, according to the CPJ.

Another report, this one from Amnesty International, warns the Chinese are rounding up dissident journalists without trial in Beijing, in what the officials call a “clean up” of the capital.

Amnesty basically accuses Beijing of itself politicizing the Games. “Official statements suggest that the Olympics are being used to justify such repression in the name of ‘harmony’ or ‘social stability’ rather than acting as a catalyst for reform,” the report said, and it urged the IOC to become more aggressive on rights issues.

“We’ve also seen increasing arrests of human rights activists and increasing use of ‘re-education’ through forced labor, and what they call enforced drug rehabitation,” said Irene Khan, Amnesty’s secretary general.

Chinese authorities expect some 20,000 to 30,000 journalists in China to report on the Games, and it knows that many of those journalists will take the occasion to test just how free they can be to travel, report news, and conduct interviews, all that under normal circumstances would be frowned upon. And if they have problems they will certainly tell the world. If it goes right, they’ll tell the world, too. Chinese officials have to decide just how much dogma to sacrifice to get the right report.

The challenge ahead was exemplified this week by a demonstration near the Beijing Olympic headquarters by the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RWB). The four demonstrators, led by Vincent Brossel, head of the RWB Asia Desk, wore black T-shirts illustrated with handcuffs in place of the Olympic rings, they unfurled banners and they talked with about a dozen foreign journalists covering the event. And then the Chinese police swooped, they allegedly roughed up some of the journalists who tried to leave the site, and they asked some for their electronic disks.

Chinese officials have made much of the fact they are teaching their people how to be polite and even to speak some English in the run-up to the Games, so one has to really ask whether it is sending the police to such training, too, or foreign journalists covering demonstrations, whether legal or not, remain fair game?

So instead of China getting reams of copy on how great its one-year countdown celebration was in the very square that prompted the pro-democracy demonstrations back in 1989, the world’s press concentrated on writing about foreign journalists still having a hard time in China. Just goes to show how one incident can spoil years of planning. It should also serve as a wake-up call to the Chinese that these types of demonstrations will only become worse and more frequent as the one-year countdown continues.

“We have a very strong feeling that the government is not making any positive moves in terms of press freedom,” Brossel told reporters. “There is no real improvement. There is still censorship of the Internet, censorship of the local media, and the jamming of radio signals.” It handed out lists of Chinese journalists and online dissidents currently jailed.

That in turn led to a 2 a.m. raid on the participants’ hotel rooms with the phones cut off.  Robert Menard, RWB general secretary told AFP that police “asked whether we knew it was forbidden to demonstrate without permission. We said it was also forbidden elsewhere, but we did it anyway.”

Foreign ministry and Chinese Olympic officials said they had no knowledge of the demonstration and the police actions. Oh, to be the fly on the wall as this is now discussed behind high Chinese walls. It’s very doubtful this will be the last such “illegal” demonstration before the Games, let alone what various groups will get up to during the Games when the eyes of the world truly will be on China. The world will be watching how the police handle themselves, and the probable demonstrations, and that, not the Games themselves, may well be the defining test of whether the Chinese blew their $40 billion investment or made a wise investment.

Can China change so many necessary spots so quickly? If so there is a chance the official slogan to the Games could come true “One World, One Dream”!

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