The Olympics cracks down on activism

The Olympics have been used as an excuse for Chinese authorities to crack down on activists. This is the overall balance that Amnesty International’s East Asia researcher Mark Allison casts of the run up to the games that will kick off in Beijing on August 8. A far cry from the human rights pledges to “complete freedom” to report for the global media that helped China win the right to host the 2008 Olympics, human rights organisations have reported a steady deterioration of human rights during the run up to the games. However, there are some positive signs, like the government’s promise to abolish the death penalty in the long term and a new law that obliges all death sentences to pass through the Supreme Court.

What is the situation in China on the eve of the Olympics?

Amnesty International’s main concern is the situation for domestic rights activists. We have looked to Chinese officials to fulfil their commitment that human rights would improve in the run up to the Olympics but all the signs are that the situation is going backwards when it comes to human rights. Amnesty has been publishing reports monitoring the situation in China, the last one was in April, that show how China has used the Olympics as a pretext to crack down on activists. Apparently, the authorities want to promote an image of respectability to the rest of the world so people who want to draw attention to the other side of the picture have been targeted and either detained in their own homes or imprisoned. Many have been rounded up in Beijing and sent off to their home towns, many to go through reeducation through labour.

The government has banned flags and banners in the stadiums…

There is a big concern because the IOC has gone on record saying publicly that it supports freedom of expression but there is a clause in the Olympic charter that bans demonstrations or religious or racial or political propaganda in Olympic sites, venues or other areas. Amnesty has called on the IOC to clarify what this means, what sites qualify as being Olympic venues. For example, whether it includes media centres that have been set up to cover the event, but there still hasn’t been a clear clarification on this. Then there is the problem that the Beijing Olympic organising committee has produced its own regulations, one set for foreign visitors and another for spectators, which contain much broader restrictions. The guidelines for spectators even include a ban on any kind of human rights publicity at Olympic venues, which seems to go much further than the Olympic charter. Amnesty would like the IOC to raise concerns publicly about this and also to raise concerns directly with the Chinese authorities.

Are there no encouraging signs at all?

The main positive signs are the reforms to the death penalty system. Amnesty has drawn links between human dignity and the provisions of the Olympic Charter in its campaign work, the death penalty obviously going against any notion of human dignity. The Chinese government has said that in the long run it will abolish the death penalty but that could be a very long time. In the meantime we have called on the government to limit the application of the penalty and at the beginning of the year the Supreme Court review was brought in for all death sentences.

What does this mean exactly?

That whereas in the past local courts at the provincial level had the authority to approve and pass death sentences and execute people, now all cases have to go to the central Supreme court to be approved. This was brought in by Chinese officials because they said they wanted to improve human rights, to improve the quality of trials and reduce the number of people being sentenced to death. Officials have said that the measure has led to a significant reduction in the number of executions, however, even though I think this is probably true we don’t have the statistics to prove it because the Chinese government still deems them to be state secrets.

What about the limitations on press?

The situation for press applies to both Chinese and foreign journalists. When Beijing was awarded the games Chinese officials went on record as saying there would be complete media freedom. But what we have seen is increasing control and censorship over what Chinese journalists can cover – a whole variety of topics are off limits because they are deemed sensitive by the authorities. Chinese journalists have been put in prison for publishing information that the government doesn’t like, one of these is Shi Tao who is serving a ten year sentence for divulging state secrets: his crime? Sending an email about a communist party directive to journalists about how they should cover the anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown in 1989. Amnesty is covering his case and obviously calling for him to be released.

And the foreign press?

There has been quite a lot of coverage of the new regulations that China passed at the beginning of last year which were meant to increase the freedom of foreign journalists. Amnesty welcomed them when they were passed but there are more and more cases of journalists who continue to be obstructed when trying to report on issues which the government deems to be sensitive; one obvious example is the case of Tibet, where the government has basically sealed off the whole area to journalists since the protests in March. Also the situation following the earthquake in Sichuan: initially the government seemed to be allowing fairly free media reporting but recently there have been reports of journalists being blocked from interviewing people in the earthquake zone, apparently because the government doesn’t want coverage of parents who are protesting because their children have died in the earthquake and are concerned about the standards of construction in the area.

What can be done to get around the limits on press freedom?

Some people have been able to cover stories and its not a completely negative picture but complete media freedom means allowing journalists to cover stories whether they are critical of the authorities or not. You can’t just turn on the tap for some reporting and close it for others. I think what we need is for the International Olympic Committee to be a lot more outspoken about these kinds of violations, particularly when they say they were instrumental in getting those regulations passed in the first place. Officials from the IOC have said that they support the importance of freedom of expression which is important. But if regulations are being violated and journalists are being blocked from reporting then the IOC should be speaking out about that as well.

How are activists getting organised on the ground?

Activists in China find it extremely difficult and the ones who have raised human rights concerns in the context of the Olympics have been put in prison or are held under tight surveillance by the police. One of these is Hu Jia, a well known activist who was covering a number of human rights cases in the run up to the games and who publicly said, including to a European Union Parliamentary hearing that he was able to participate in using a webcam, that he believed the government was not fulfilling its promises. Shortly after that he was detained by the police and sentenced under subversion charges. So I think that for local activists it is going to be extremely difficult to raise any kind of public concern during the games and that the pattern we will see will be a pattern where people who have not been imprisoned will be kept under very close surveillance or maybe even moved out of Beijing while the games are on.

Is there any chance of activists being freed during the Olympics?

We hope that there is still time for the government to have a change of heart and take a new direction but time is running out and the pattern so far has been increased repression. We hope that there will be more pressure from the IOC and from other governments, whose pressure until now has been fairly muted. In particular we are calling on world leaders to speak out now before the games take place because the risk is that once they are there the authorities will use them as a kind of endorsement for the kinds of violations that have been taking place during the preparations for the Olympics. It is very important for governments to speak out now, also to ensure that the Olympics have a positive legacy for human rights which is hopefully something that everybody wants, both the Chinese authorities and the broader Olympic movement.