Filed under: 1984, 2008 olympics, beijing, Big Brother, China, civil liberties, civil rights, Communism, Detainee, Dictatorship, Dissent, Empire, Extraordinary Rendition, free press, free speech, George Bush, hong kong, human rights, humiliation, Japan, journalists, Media, mugabe, olympics, Oppression, orwell, police brutality, Police State, Protest, rendition, Surveillance, tibet, tibet protests, Torture, War On Terror, Zimbabwe | Tags: falun gong, falungong practitioners, Gao Zhisheng, Nippon Television Network Corp., olympics security, Shinji Katsuta, Shinzou Kawakita, tokyo, Xinjiang
Chinese Pleading For Human Rights Are Harrassed & Jailed Before Olympics, Journalist Are Intimidated
Washington Post
August 2, 2008
Behind the gray walls and barbed wire of the prison here, eight Chinese farmers with a grievance against the government have been consigned to Olympic limbo.
Their indefinite detainment, relatives and neighbors said, is the price they are paying for stirring up trouble as China prepares to host the Beijing Games. Trouble, the Communist Party has made clear, will not be permitted.
“My bet is the authorities won’t let them out until after the Olympics,” said Wang Xiahua, a veteran anti-government agitator from this farm town 180 miles southwest of Beijing and a supporter of the imprisoned farmers.
The Olympic Games have become the occasion for a broad crackdown against dissidents, gadflies and malcontents this summer. Although human rights activists say they have no accurate estimate of how many people have been imprisoned, they believe the figure to be in the thousands.
The crackdown comes seven years after the secretary general of the Beijing Olympic Bid Committee declared that staging the Games in the Chinese capital would “not only promote our economy but also enhance all social conditions, including education, health and human rights.”
Now, human rights have been set back rather than enhanced, activists say.
“The Olympics have reversed the clock,” said Nicholas Bequelin, a Hong Kong-based specialist for Human Rights in China.
Another foreign human rights advocacy group, Amnesty International, came to a similar conclusion in a report issued Monday titled “The Olympics Countdown — Broken Promises.”
“By continuing to persecute and punish those who speak out for human rights, the Chinese authorities have lost sight of the promises they made when they were granted the Games seven years ago,” said Roseann Rife, Amnesty’s Asia-Pacific deputy director. “The Chinese authorities are tarnishing the legacy of the Games.”
The repressive atmosphere has intensified in part because senior Communist Party officials seem to be just as determined to prevent embarrassing protests — which could be televised — as they are to avert terrorist attacks during the Olympics. In exhortations to security forces, Public Security Ministry commanders and Xi Jinping, the senior Communist Party leader in charge of Olympic preparations, repeatedly have said that police must block any attempt to damage China’s image.
Despite these concerns, President Bush and many other world leaders have accepted China’s invitation to attend the Olympic opening ceremony on Friday. After saying for months that the Games should be viewed only as a sporting event, Bush met with Chinese rights activists Tuesday and said he would use the opportunity to remind President Hu Jintao of U.S. support for human rights. The Foreign Ministry criticized his gesture, calling it interference in China’s internal affairs. But his decision to attend was still being interpreted as endorsement of China’s contention that the Olympic Games are not an appropriate stage for human rights appeals.
Chinese police beat, detain 2 Japanese reporters
AP
August 5, 2008
Two Japanese journalists were briefly detained and beaten by police in western China, their companies and one of the men said Tuesday, triggering a protest by the Japanese government. Chinese officials later apologized.
They were working in Xinjiang at the scene of a deadly attack Monday on Chinese policemen when they were forcibly taken to a border police facility, said Shinji Katsuta, a reporter for Japanese broadcaster Nippon Television Network Corp.
“My face was pushed into the ground, my arm was twisted and I was hit two or three times in the face,” he said in a phone interview broadcast on his station.
A photographer from the Tokyo Shimbun newspaper, Shinzou Kawakita, was also apprehended and roughed up, said a company spokesman who declined to give his name, citing company policy.
Chinese Rights Advocate Tortured in Captivity
Yu Hang
Sound of Hope Radio
August 5, 2008
In the shadow of a Beijing Olympics touted as a harbinger of change and human rights improvements, a well-placed informant from China disclosed to Sound of Hope Radio (SOH) the painful plight of renowned Chinese human rights attorney Gao Zhisheng since his disappearance a year ago.
The anonymous insider told SOH in a telephone interview that Gao, after his mysterious disappearance on September 22, 2007, was taken by the PRC police to a secret location where he suffered physical and psychological torture for nearly 60 days. The source said the level of torture was “beyond anyone’s imagination” and even the police executing the torture admired Gao’s uncompromising spirit.
While recounting the tortures inflicting on Gao, the insider souce said [transcribed from the telephone recording], “For example, they stripped attorney Gao Zhisheng naked, threw him to the ground and attacked him with electric batons. They deprived him of sleep. This is very common. It goes without saying that they beat him up as well. They have resorted to lowly, despicable means.”
The insider added that they tortured Gao Zhisheng to make him do three things. First, to make him write an article condemning Falun Gong. Second, to make him write articles condemning the founder of Falun Gong. Third, to make him write articles praising the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
“But Gao Zhisheng did not compromise,” the source said. “The police were shattered to watch the horrible tortures. The outside world cannot imagine [the severity of the torture.]”
The insider added that Gao was tortured in the same way Falun Gong practitioners are tortured and that the level of torture will make one feel like an animal instead of a human being. The tortures were so cruel that Gao Zhisheng thought of committing suicide and hurting himself, according to the source. While recounting Gao’s plight, the insider repeatedly said, “the tortures are beyond anyone’s imagination.”
The insider told SOH that, with the Beijing Olympic Games impending, the CCP has secretly removed Gao’s family away from Beijing for fear of any unwanted incident, and the Chinese authorities do not plan to release Gao before the Olympic Games are over.
Gao Zhisheng is an attorney once highly praised by China for his successes. In 2005, after sending a series of open letters to authorities questioning the torture and abuse of Falun Gong practitioners, a campaign of harassment, arrest and torture was directed at Gao and his family.
http://www.watoday.com.au/news/la../08/05/1217701960735.html
China Orders Highest Alert for Olympics
http://www.nytimes.com/20..l?_r=2&ref=world&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
China apologises for roughing up journalists on eve of Games
http://www.breitbart.com/article…1.vz49fe9h&show_article=1
Beijing Olympics security: theater of the absurd
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/08/05/sports/OLY-Inside-the-Rings.php
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