July 14 2008

The Chinese Government has broken a string of key pledges on human rights which it made to secure the 2008 Olympic Games, according to a report released today by Tibet Watch(1).

The report, “Broken Promises”, is released seven years after Beijing was awarded the 2008 Games on July 13, 2001. Since then, according to the report, Beijing’s human rights record in Tibet has deteriorated markedly. The report highlights serious and escalating abuses of Tibetans’ cultural and linguistic rights since 2001, as well as a determined assault by the authorities on religion where “the Chinese regime has established, and maintains, a stranglehold on the Buddhist faith in Tibet”.

Central to Beijing’s bid to stage the Games was the key commitment to guaranteeing full freedom for foreign reporters to report on any subject from any region of China in the run up to and during the Games. “Broken Promises” lists the key pledges made by Chinese officials on media freedoms and exposes the Chinese Government’s cynical contempt for such pledges by cataloguing a series of obstructions, restrictions and intimidation of foreign journalists. Such restrictions culminated in the ruthless imposition of a media blackout on Tibet earlier this year following the Tibet protests in March.

The Tibet Watch report also demonstrates the failure of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to hold the Chinese government to promises made to improve its human rights record. The IOC has been publicly silent despite China’s clear violation of promises on media freedoms.

Matt Whitticase of Free Tibet Campaign said: “As this Tibet Watch report makes clear, China’s promises to improve its rights record were not worth the paper they were written on. For reasons of political expediency, foreign governments and the IOC have looked the other way whilst human rights abuses in Tibet have actually worsened since the Games were given to Beijing. Foreign leaders such as Bush and Sarkozy must now reconsider their presence at the Opening Ceremony. Attendance will only confer on the Chinese regime a respectability it has done nothing to deserve.”

Ends 

Notes to Editor:

(1) The report can be downloaded from the Tibet Watch site here