Today marks the start of the ten-day countdown to the Olympic Games in Beijing and Amnesty has been studying the Chinese authorities’ human rights performance very carefully since they won the right to host the Games back in 2001. We haven’t liked what we’ve seen.
The Chinese government promised that the Olympics would help bring human rights to China. Wang Wei, Secretary General of the Beijing Olympic Bid Committee, said in 2001: “We will give the media complete freedom to report when they come to China. (…) We are confident that the Games coming to China not only promotes our economy but also enhances all social conditions, including education, health and human rights.”[continues...]
The report continues “here” or can be downloaded “here“.
Article by By Orville Schell Newsweek MagazineChina’s Agony of Defeat
It’s impossible to understand what the Games mean to the Chinese without understanding their history of humiliation.
The Olympics are an irresistible stage for athletes-but also for those who wish to act out their grievances before the world. The Beijing Games, which kick off on Aug. 8, are hardly an exception. While Chinese leaders furiously insist they’re not, and should not be, “political,” these Olympics promise to become one of the most charged in history. Rarely has a more varied array of contentious issues crystallized around a single sporting event.[continues...]
BERLIN, Aug 1 (Reuters) - Under the slogan “We are all Chinese”, nine German Olympians have posed in their sports kit for a Munich magazine while holding pictures of Chinese dissidents in front of their faces.
The pictures were published on Friday in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung magazine under a headline recalling the famous 1963 “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech by U.S. President John F. Kennedy that paid tribute to West Berlin’s freedom after the Wall was built.
Swimmer Petra Dallmann was depicted holding a photograph in front of her face of Hu Jia, who the magazine said has often criticised human rights in China.[continues...]
Leading human rights activist Hu Jia today spent his 35th birthday alone in his cell in Hubai prison in Tianjin (200 km southeast of Beijing). His wife, Zeng Jinyan, his mother and his sister were not allowed to see him. The police told them they were “too busy to make the necessary arrangements.” The last time his mother and sister were allowed to see him was on 4 May.
“The police have behaved disgracefully,” Reporters Without Borders said. “It is unacceptable that Hu Jia’s family has not been allowed to visit him on his birthday. We are worried about his health which is worsening steadily. He suffers from cirrhosis, as a result of an attack of hepatitis, but he has not had a single medical examination since his arrest. It is appalling that, just a few days before the start of the Olympic Games, a prisoner of conscience is not even being allowed to see his wife on his birthday.”[continues...]
Jailed Chinese rights campaigner Hu Jia is in deteriorating health and police have barred relatives from seeing him on his birthday on Friday, the activist’s wife has written on her blog.
Police also prevented AFP reporters on Thursday from visiting his wife, Zeng Jinyan, despite China’s promises to allow foreign journalists freedom to report in the lead up to the Beijing Olympics.
The police action comes amid reports of a steady stream of arrests of dissidents and rights activists in the run-up to next month’s Games.
Zeng, who is confined to their small home in the “Bobo Freedom Village” apartment complex in Beijing with the couple’s nine-month-old baby, wrote on her blog that in a July 9 visit with Hu, he showed possible signs of anaemia.[continues...]
Chinese activist’s case to be highlighted at ‘Stand Up For Freedom’ comedy nights
Amnesty International is asking people in Scotland to send a birthday message of support for an imprisoned man in China who will be the focus of its campaigning at this year’s Edinburgh Festival.
Hu Jia, who will be 35 tomorrow (Friday 25 July), is a Chinese human rights activist jailed for three and half years in April after being convicted of ‘inciting subversion’. Hu’s offence had been to speak out about Chinese government failures over AIDS prevention.
Amnesty is extremely concerned at recent reports that Hu is suffering from a serious liver disease and may not be getting proper medical treatment. Relatives who have managed to visit him in a jail near Beijing also report that guards have appointed four other prisoners to monitor him and that he is undergoing forced ‘reform’, including being made to sing ‘reform songs’.[continues...]
Amnesty International’s Secretary General Irene Khan has written an open letter to China’s President Hu Jintao.
8 July 2008
Your Excellency
With one month remaining until the much-anticipated start of the XXIX Olympiad in Beijing, I ask you to take five steps toward the “development of human rights” pledged by the Beijing Olympics Bid Committee in 2001. Over the last year Amnesty International has collected hundreds of thousands of voices from around the world echoing this call. I join them in urging you to take this historic opportunity to act.
Amnesty International recognises the Chinese Government’s efforts to address some longstanding human rights concerns. I am particularly encouraged by the apparent progress made in reducing the use of the death penalty through the Supreme Peoples Court review process. [continues...]
Recently, renowned Beijing human rights advocate Hu Jia was transferred to Chaobai Prison in Tianjin. He has since been placed under heavy restrictions, in which four prisoners have been instructed to teach him the prison code. Hu’s mother, wife and daughter had visited him on June fifth. Subsequently Hu wrote separate letters to his parents, wife Jin Yan and young daughter.
According to insiders, there are policies in place that should allow for a family visit on the fifth of July, however officials have used “The Olympics” as an excuse to forbid the regular family visits. The title of Hu’s letter to his parents was “To Nurture”, to his wife he wrote “Like trees, thinking of each other”, and the letter for his daughter was entitled “Thanksgiving”.[continues...]
◊There is a new online petition form to be filled by Amnesty International USA in the petitions page. Also all our thoughts are with Hu Jia and his family on his birthday.
◊New friends link.
This blog has the aim to act as a collector for all information regarding Hu Jia and Zeng Jinyan in english. Any articles, news clips, photos or other updates can be posted and viewed through this blog. Please feel free to inform us of any information collected or noticed which has not been added, as well as commenting on anything you would like to share. This Blog exists through the help of a number of people, (H&G among others) and is my way of supporting Hu Jia and Zeng Jinyan from afar.
I have the honour to know Jinyan and to have seen first hand her exceptional courage, and so my heart goes out them and their child.
G.
