China Curtails Media Freedoms

China, earlier this week in Beijing, unveiled its plans for the coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

Liu Qi, mayor of Beijing and president of the organising Committee BOCOG, and Sun Weijia, Olympics Press Chief revealed that China would ban material about human rights violations.

A list of banned items was also produced, which may not be brought into China, including "print products and CD-ROMs which are harmful to China's politics, economy and culture."

Needless to say, the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) press commission chief, Kevan Gosper, has asked journalists "to respect the conditions and rules" in place in China.

Matt Whitticase of Free Tibet Campaign said:

"The IOC's infamous pledge that giving the Games to China would improve the human rights situation there in the run up to the 2008 Games is in ruins.

In 2002 Jacques Rogge said he would act if China failed to protect rights to his satisfaction in the run up to the Games. Instead, Mr Gosper's latest statement suggests the IOC is colluding with China in preventing journalists from covering China's ongoing and serious human rights violations in China and Tibet, a key component of the overall coverage of the Beijing 2008 Games.

It is particularly damaging that the IOC should encourage journalists to censor themselves precisely at the time when China is cracking down on the ability of domestic and foreign journalists to report sensitive news in China."

The Foreign Correspondents Club in Beijing has received reports of 72 incidents of harassment of journalists from 15 countries, over the last year.

Notwithstanding the above, it is safe to assume that the IOC will not act to destabilise the 2008 Games, so long as they get the sponsorship deals.

Olympic Expulsions

It is reported that China intends to expel migrant workers during the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Needless to say, the Chinese authorities have denied this report and have "spun" the denial by saying that Beijing is looking into how to keep the "mentally ill" from "damaging the public interest" during the games.

That's an interesting way of denying the story.

This story comes amidst promises from China that hosting the Olympics will improve respect for human rights.

The Beijing Morning Post raised the expulsion issue earlier this month, by saying that many of the 1 million migrant workers in Beijing from other parts of China would be expelled before the games.

Zhou Jidong, head of Beijing's legal department, denied it and said in relation to the mentally ill issue:

"We are now studying the issue.

The city government plans to ask the municipal (council) to make a law about psychiatric health regulations aimed at providing mental health treatment and preventing mentally ill people from damaging the public interest."

The IOC will of course not intervene in this, as long as they make a good living from the sponsorship deals that the Olympics brings in.