IOC's President Ducks Responsibilities

Jacques Rogge Ignoring China's Escalating Media Restrictions
[London] IOC President, Jacques Rogge, claimed last weekend that next year's Beijing Olympic Games "will contribute to the evolution of China" and that "the 20,000 journalists who come to the Games will show China as it is. It speaks for itself that that will accelerate the social revolution (1)." Rogge's comments fly in the face of widely reported incidents of intimidation of both domestic and foreign journalists reporting in China.
New regulations introduced supposedly to allow foreign journalists to report freely from China in the run up to the 2008 Games are being ignored widely by local officials. A BBC film crew was recently expelled from Zhushan in Hunan province after attempting to report on riots that had taken place there (2). Chinese reporters working for foreign newspapers (3) remain imprisoned for reporting on issues deemed sensitive by the Chinese authorities; and foreign journalists wanting to report from Tibet and Xinjiang are still required to apply for special permits, despite a pledge made by Olympics Press Chief, Sun Weijia, at a press briefing in September last year that "they [foreign journalists] can travel anywhere in China. There will be no restrictions (4)." 

"Rogge's comments represent a total failure by the IOC to hold China to the pledge it made to allow full media freedoms during the Games (5)," said Matt Whitticase of Free Tibet Campaign. "How can Chinese and foreign journalists 'show China as it is' when it is so difficult for them just to obtain permission to travel to places like Tibet? If Rogge is sincere in his opinion that the Games will benefit the evolution of Chinese society, he must demand immediately that China lifts all restrictions on foreign and domestic journalists in their coverage of China in the run up to the Games."

Contact: Matt Whitticase 07904 063 746 or 020 7324 4605, email matt@freetibet.org.

Notes to Editor:

(1) Rogge was talking to the Belgian newspaper de Tijd.

(2) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6458565.stm

(3) Zhou Yan of The New York Times and Ching Cheong of Singapore's Straits Times.

(4) As reported in DPA, 28 September 2006.

(5) The official China Daily guaranteed full media freedoms in the run up to the IOC decision on which city would stage the 2008 Games: "The world's media will enjoy full freedom to report on all aspects of China if the 2008 Olympic Games is held in the city" [Beijing]. The IOC acknowledged that pledge after awarding the Games to Beijing: "Beijing has signed a Host City Contract with the IOC which provides the condition on the Organising Committee to give free access to the country for all accredited media." (Jacques Rogge, quoted by AP, 27 August 2001).

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