Beijing Olympics 2008: Winning Press Freedom - World Press ...

Beijing Olympics 2008: Winning Press Freedom
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you,” are sent by the dozens to journalists. Chinese web sites post the personal contact
details of journalists, particularly those working for the Associated Press, The Wall Street
Journal and USA Today, making them easy targets for the nationalists who have been so
strangely authorized to protest.
In the face of this crisis, the Foreign Correspondents Club of China sent security advice to
all its members on April 7, advising them to get in touch with their embassies, to conceal
personal details, to leave notice of their whereabouts when traveling and to report the
most flagrant threats. The Chinese Foreign Ministry said it was not in a position to control
the threats.
So it is in a tense and hostile climate that tens of thousands of journalists are about to
arrive in Beijing to cover the Olympic Games. Nothing suggests that this nationalist wave
is going to calm down. Indeed, the repression in Tibet and the refusal of the authorities to
concede improvements in human rights threaten to radicalize the two camps.
Foreign journalists are going to be faced with many other problems. First, will be that of
finding Chinese interlocutors who can talk to them about the human rights situation. Even
if tongues have loosened in recent years in China, and particularly in Beijing, it is still very
risky to speak about the lack of freedoms on camera in front of a foreign journalist.
Those dissidents who have sought to draw attention to lack of liberty in the period leading
up to the Olympic Games have been the targets of a merciless repression. The bestknown
example is that of the dissident Hu Jia, whose imprisonment is clearly linked to his
pivotal role in denouncing human rights violations to foreign journalists and diplomats.
In arresting and punishing Hu Jia, the government is addressing a clear message to
Chinese dissidents: “Watch out. If you talk to foreigners about the Olympic Games, you
will suffer the same fate.” The authorities are also sending a warning to the foreign press:
“You see, we can arrest and condemn those you interview, and there is nothing anyone
can do to stop us.”
Lastly, the Chinese authorities are cocking a snoot at Western diplomats, particularly
Europeans, who had found Hu Jia to be both moderate and charismatic.
To rub in the message cynically, the police and the prosecutor cited two interviews that
Hu Jia had given to the foreign press - just to be sure the message was well understood.
Other embarrassing witnesses have also been imprisoned. One of the founders of the
Chinese Democratic Party, Zhu Yufu, was condemned in the eastern province of
Hangzhou. The human rights activist Zheng Mingfang was sent to a labor camp for two
years because of an open letter he had written about the Olympic Games.
In March, Yang Chunlin, initiator of the campaign “We want human rights, not the Olympic
Games” was sentenced to five years in prison by the intermediate court in Jiamusi, while
two other participants in the campaign have also been detained.