http://www.kansascity.com/495/story/734636-p2.html

Posted on Tue, Aug. 05, 2008 01:39 PM

China breaks Olympic promises on rights, media, pollution
By JACK CHANG AND TIM JOHNSON
McClatchy Newspapers

With four days left before the start of the 2008 Summer Games, Chinese
officials have not lived up to key promises they made to win the right
to host the Olympics, including widening press freedoms, cleaning up
their capital city's polluted air and respecting human rights.

The failures were evident Monday:

-A thick pall of smog covered Beijing, raising concerns that endurance
events such as long-distance races would have to be moved out of the
city. Some still held out hope that emergency measures would clear the
city's air by Friday.

-Near Tiananmen Square in the heart of the city, police scuffled with
protesters who said they were evicted from their homes to make way for
Games-related development.

-Chinese censors continued to block access to politically sensitive
Web sites for thousands of foreign journalists gathered at the Olympic
press center.

These failures stand in contrast to the Herculean efforts China has
made to prepare for the Olympics, building world-class venues, housing
and other infrastructure.

Eager to impress a world audience, Chinese organizers have spent an
estimated $40 billion on the 18-day event and built breathtaking
facilities such as the landmark National Stadium, known as the Bird's
Nest, where the opening ceremonies will be held Friday.

However, before and after 2001, when China won the right to host the
Summer Games, Chinese Olympic officials repeatedly said they'd use the
Games to improve the country's human rights record and allow reporters
unfettered access to cover the competitions.

"We will give the media complete freedom to report when they come to
China," Wang Wei, the secretary general of the Beijing Olympic Bid
Committee, told a press conference in 2001. "We are confident that the
games coming to China not only promote our economy, but also enhance
all social conditions, including education, health and human rights."

When they applied to host the games, Beijing officials also had
completed a Candidature File, in which they agreed to meet specific
requirements. Although the International Olympic Committee said the
file is a public document, Beijing Olympics officials didn't follow
through Monday on a request by McClatchy to see the Candidature File
they completed.

Reached by phone, the Beijing Olympic organizing committee's head of
media operations, Sun Weijia, declined to comment.

A model file found on the International Olympic Committee Web site,
however, requires host cities to provide athletes with a healthy
physical environment, to give the news media open access and to honor
the International Olympic Committee's charter, among other measures.

One of the charter's six fundamental principles states, "Any
discrimination with regard to a country or a person on grounds of
race, religion, politics, gender or otherwise is incompatible with
belonging to the Olympic Movement."

Critics, including top U.S. officials, said Chinese officials have
violated those agreements by tightening repression of political
dissent in advance of the Games and not allowing reporters covering
the Olympics full access.

Some critics look back and say that it was easy to believe most of the
official statements.

"The argument certainly appeared plausible, if not compelling,"
recalled Rep. Christopher Smith, a New Jersey Republican, who visited
Beijing last month. "But in the years, now months, run-up to the
Olympics, the reality has been numbingly disappointing."

A recent report by the human rights advocacy group Amnesty
International found that Chinese officials have stepped up their
persecution of followers of the outlawed Falun Gong spiritual
movement, and detained rural petitioners seeking redress on a range of
political issues.
"I suppose it was just a bunch of words when they made those
promises," said Sophie Richardson, the Asia advocacy director for the
U.S.-based watchdog group Human Rights Watch. "When the Chinese
government is serious about something, they do it."

In 2001, after China was awarded the games, Beijing Olympic officials
signed a second document, called the Host City Contract, which
includes legally binding requirements for hosting the Games. An
International Olympic Committee spokeswoman said Monday that the
contract isn't a public document, although previous Olympic host
cities have released their contracts.

The criticisms have put Chinese officials on the defensive, and state-
controlled media quoted Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao saying over the
weekend, "China is a responsible country. We will fulfill the promises
we made for the Olympics."

Despite making verbal pledges, Chinese officials likely didn't legally
agree to take any action to improve the country's human rights record,
said Susan Brownell, a U.S.-based adviser to the Beijing City Olympic
Education Standing Office.

Brownell said she'd seen neither Beijing's Candidature File nor the
Host City Contract but had talked to people who'd seen the contract.

"The idea's out there that China made commitments on human rights, but
it's simply not true," Brownell said. "Nobody was in any mood to make
any promises then."

Chinese officials, however, emphasized human rights and press freedoms
in their Olympic bid after losing out to Sydney to host the 2000
Summer Games.

Suspecting that International Olympic Committee members were still
wary of China following the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, officials
made statements that International Olympic Committee members
interpreted as pledges to relax the government's authoritarian grip on
its citizens in the run-up to the games.

In January 2007, the Chinese government also significantly loosened
restrictions on foreign media, which allowed reporters to travel
freely across the country and interview anyone who consented. Those
new provisions end on Oct. 17, 2008.

But a series of disasters this year have left China's leaders wary of
social and political instability. Snowstorms socked in much of the
nation in late January and early February, the worst ethnic riots in
nearly two decades erupted in ethnic Tibetan areas of China and a 7.9-
magnitude earthquake in Sichuan on May 12 took about 80,000 lives, by
the most recent count.

While authorities offered journalists unprecedented access around the
quake zone, large Tibetan-inhabited areas of western China remain
blocked, in defiance of their promises.