Shame! Shame! Shame on China! The Portrait of a Spectator-Sparsely
Beijing Olympics -- Journalists pepper Olympic committee representatives
with questions on political rights

International Herald Tribune

Journalists pepper Olympic committee representatives with questions on
political rights

By Peter Berlin
Thursday, August 14, 2008

BEIJING: Every morning during the Olympics, the local organizing
committee and the International Olympic Committee face the world's news
media at a state-of-the-Games news conference. These things are rarely
entirely smooth sailing for the officials - after all, it is a rare
chance for journalists to show off their questioning chops to the cream
of their international competition.

But the conference Wednesday turned nasty in a quite unprecedented way,
as American and British journalists lobbed one explosive question after
another on human rights in China.

The conference started smoothly enough with Wang Wei, executive vice
president, secretary general and spokesman for the Beijing organizing
committee, or Bocog, listing the statistics from the day before.

Ruan Lanyu, an official with the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Culture,
talked at length about cultural activities in the city during the Games.
It was a speech later dismissed with flat irony by one British
questioner as "immensely quotable," but it did contain the nugget that
from Friday there would be a "cultural celebration" in Tiananmen Square
with the "full participation of the people."

After the usual questions on drug tests, the first shot was fired by
Bill Marcus, of Fox Radio News. He started to read out a series of cases
of Chinese citizens who had gone to the police to apply for permits to
protest at one of three sites set up for the purpose and had been
harassed or arrested. Marcus said later that he had intended to present
five cases from a list supplied by Human Rights Watch. He was quickly
cut off by the moderator, Sun Weide, who told him to keep it brief and
then asked if Marcus had a question.

Marcus said he did. China had said it wanted to emulate the human rights
records of other countries. "Which countries did China have in mind?" he
wanted to know.

Wang displayed the first sign of irritability. "You are supposed to be
in China covering the Games," he replied. Then he told Marcus that
Bocog's responsibility was running the Games and that he should take his
question to the Public Security authorities.

The microphone passed to Alex Thomson of Channel 4 News in Britain. "My
question will be short," he promised sweetly. It was. "The Chinese
government lied through its teeth about human rights. Aren't the IOC
ashamed?"

Giselle Davies, the IOC spokeswoman, thanked him for his question.

"We are proud of the fact that these Games are progressing with
spectacular sport in spectacular venues," she said.

Thomson was not deterred. "Aren't the IOC ashamed?" he asked again.

He asked the question twice more as Davies answered with variations on
the theme that the IOC was happy that these were an "operationally sound
Games."

When Thomson told her that nobody in the room thought she had answered
the question, she replied that the Olympics were "an event first and
foremost for the athletes."

Peter Simpson, a British journalist with The South China Morning Post in
Hong Kong, kept up the theme of human rights.

Wang said he had not promised everything, only that the Olympics would
"help China open up a little."

"After 30 years of reform people have more freedom," Wang said. They are
better off, happy and optimistic, he said. Some people are not happy, of
course, but that is the same anywhere. They need to abide by the law.

"We can't have the country in chaos," he said. He again chided the
visiting journalists.

"Many people come here to pick into small details," he said. "To find
fault."

When Simpson tried to press his point, Wang said, "This is not a debate."

A Japanese journalist asked why the moderator at the news conference
after Irakli Tsirekidze of Georgia won the 90-kilogram men's judo final
the day before had refused to allow a question on the Georgia-Russia
conflict. Wang answered with what has become a mantra of these Games
that Rule 51.3 of the Olympic charter forbids the promotion of political
agendas within Olympic venues.

There were two questions about alleged assaults on British journalists
by the Chinese police.

Davies answered that the IOC did not approve of any attempts to prevent
journalists who are abiding by the rules from doing their jobs.

When Michael Bristow of the BBC returned to the theme of the protest
parks, Wang's cool again threatened to crack.

Not one Chinese person has had an application to protest approved,
Bristow said. He added that Wang kept saying that the designated protest
sites were not Bocog's responsibility, but it had been that body's
security director, Liu Shaowu, who had announced their creation in the
first place.

Wang answered that the protest venues represented "a step further for
the Chinese." They are part of the Chinese people's constitutional
rights, he said.

So is voting, Bristow said. He asked how the protest sites could
represent progress if no one was able to protest.

Wang persisted. "China has stepped forward," he said. "The ordinary
Chinese in the street will give the same answer. Do not underestimate
the wisdom of the Chinese people. Do not think that you are smartest.

"You have to believe the majority of the people; otherwise you are misled."

Sun announced that he would take one more question.

"Did I see Jacques Rogge here in the media center today?" gushed a
Chinese journalist. "Or did I imagine it?"

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