With the Winter Olympics scheduled to begin next week in Beijing, a report from the U. S. State Department is not expected to begin next week in Beijing. The U. S. human rights watch after the 2008 Summer Games in China painted a frightening picture of censorship, violence against journalists, and repression of dissent.

During the 2022 games, audiences around the world will see a refined edition of life in the People’s Republic of China, although not as simplified as the edition that will be shown to the Chinese people. When the Summer Olympics were held there in 2008, the Chinese communist government tightened its grip on dissent and the sluggish flow of data in the days leading up to the Games. Foreign journalists were officially granted greater freedom, but the government-controlled press was not allowed to report on them.

According to the State Department’s Country Reports on Human Rights Practices released in 2009 (read the full report here), even the Olympic Torch Relay censored when dissidents protesting China’s Tibet profession were forcibly evicted from the road by police, supposedly for their own protection.

Chinese media “received a normal recommendation from the Central Propaganda Department, which indexed topics that are not covered and added politically sensitive topics. During the year, propaganda officials issued rules restricting media policy on sensitive issues, adding protests through parents whose children died in the May 12 earthquake in Sichuan when their schools collapsed.

On August 12, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported that the propaganda government had issued a 21-point directive outlining how the national media deserves to deal with certain stories about the Olympics. According to the directive, Chinese journalists could not report on the lifting of censorship of foreign websites, the Olympic Games, the privacy of visiting heads of state, and Tibetan and Uighur separatist movements, among other issues. The board also ordered journalists to report definitively on the Olympic protection provisions.

“During the year, especially during the outbreak of unrest in Tibet and in the run-up to the Olympic Games, the government maintained strict control over news and data on the Internet,” the report says. “The computers installed in the Olympic press center have been subjected to censorship and hounds have complained that they cannot stop at certain Internet sites abroad. “temporarily blocked iTunes” the games, “apparently because officials feared Olympic athletes would download pro-Tibet songs. “

“During the Olympic Games, Beijing-based dissidents were forced to leave the city, arrested in space or subjected to 24-hour police surveillance,” the report says. “Many reported that in the weeks leading up to the opening ceremony, they were visited through state security agents who warned them to keep a low profile. Some dissidents were also warned to oppose giving media interviews.

The China Foreign Correspondents Club, a professional arrangement of Beijing-based news hounds reporting on China for a global audience, “asked its members about situations to report on after the 2008 Olympics,” the State Department said. CCCC members have reported 23 incidentes. de violence against hounds, resources or assistants, as well as incidents of destruction of photographs or information material, intimidation and summonses to foreigners through the authorities. They also reported one hundred cases of denial of access to public spaces through the authorities.

The report notes that between July 25, 2008, when the Olympic Games Press Center was inaugurated, and August 23, the day before the Closing Ceremony of the Olympic Games, the CCCC reported 30 cases of “interference with information” and that on July 22, “Police mistreated Hong Kong journalists covering a crowd seeking tickets to the Olympics. The report also states that on August 13, “Beijing police brutalized and detained an Independent Television News journalist covering a Tibet-related protest near the Olympic Village. “

Here are some of the State Department’s many other findings on China’s efforts to crack down on dissent and press freedom at the 2008 Summer Games:

• “Before the Olympics, customs officials seized a portrait of New York artist Zhang Hongtu because officials liked the Olympic Stadium’s depiction of the ‘Bird’s Nest’ on the blackboard. “

• “The government has maintained strict rules on civil society organizations and, in recent years, has tightened legal restrictions and oversight, especially in the run-up to the Olympics. “

• “The government consistently blocked websites it considered controversial, namely those discussing taiwan independence and Tibet, devout and non-secular underground organizations, democracy activists, and Tiananmen repression in 1989. “

• “During the year, the government intensified censorship and manipulation of the press and primary Internet events, adding the Tibetan protests from March to June, the May 12 earthquake in Sichuan and the Olympics. All [Chinese] media had to comply with censorship rules issued through the party. In a June 20 speech on propaganda work, Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Hu Jintao reiterated the subordinate role of local media to the party and told journalists that they will have to “serve socialism” and the party.

• “The organizers of the Beijing Olympic Games have designated three parks as special protest zones for the August 8-24 Olympic Games. However, Beijing’s Public Security Bureau did not approve a single request to hold a protest, although 77 other people allegedly implemented it. At least six of those who later asked to use the protest zones were arrested and several were forcibly returned to their home provinces. Two elderly women who implemented were administratively sentenced to one year of RTL (re-education by work), although the government later annulled those phrases.  »

• “Police arrested foreign nationals seeking to protest near the Olympic Village or in Tiananmen Square. Most of the foreign protesters were expelled from the country within 24 hours. “

• “In May, police in Henan province detained two Finnish hounds for seven hours while preparing a report on a migrant employee who had been hired in a structure related to the Beijing Olympics. “

• “The government did not respect educational freedom and greater restrictions on political and social discourse in the colleges, universities and institutes of study of the pre-Olympic era. Academics and scholars reported varying degrees of control over the problems they can read about and the conclusions may simply be based on them. Educators advocating for political reform have been reportedly discouraged from attending educational meetings in the run-up to the Olympics. Others have been suggested through their schools to keep a low profile and not publish the Olympics.

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