China's pledge that foreign journalists will be free to report without restrictions during the 2008 Beijing Olympics have been exposed as nothing more than window dressing. In acknowledging that such freedoms to report will not be extended to reports from Tibet and Xinjiang, China has backtracked on previous undertakings that foreign journalists would be able to report freely from all parts of China.

According to the official state news agency, Xinhua, Foreign Ministry Spokesman, Liu Jianchao, told a press conference in Beijing on December 1 that, whilst new regulations would allow foreign journalists to travel and report freely from most parts of China between 01 January and 17 October 2008, these freedoms would not apply to foreign journalists wishing to report from Tibet and Xinjiang. The refusal to allow free and unrestricted reporting from Tibet during 2008 represents a clear volte-face on the pledge made by Olympics Press Chief, Sun Weijia, at a first Olympics press briefing in September of this year that "They (foreign journalists) can travel anywhere in China. There will be no restrictions." (DPA, 28/09/06).

Matt Whitticase of Free Tibet Campaign said:

"Restrictions on free reporting from Tibet in 2008 clearly demonstrate that China is only too well aware that Tibet remains a gulag as a result of its brutal occupation and wishes to hide its shameful treatment of the Tibetan people from the international media.

"Two foreign journalists remain in prison for their reporting of sensitive news in China (1) and Xinhua announced in September this year tough new restrictions regarding the distribution of foreign news within China. Set against such a background, China's latest scrapping of earlier pledges to allow free reporting from anywhere in China indicates it has no intention whatsoever of allowing foreign journalists to report without restrictions. If China will not voluntarily allow journalists the freedom to report, the IOC must force China into doing so and deliver on its pledge to uphold media freedoms when it awarded the Games to Beijing in 2008.”

Notes to Editor:

(1) After Liu Qi, head of the Beijing Organisation Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG) gave assurances that restriction on foreign journalists would be eased in 2007, two journalists working for foreign publications were given prison sentences for investigating sensitive subjects: Zhao Yan of the New York Times and Ching Cheong of the Singapore-based Straits