by CHARLES HUTZLER
Friday, Sep. 22, 2006 at 12:21 AM
China has failed to live up to promises its leaders made to improve human rights for the 2008 Olympics, Amnesty International said in a report urging the International Olympic Committee to ensure that the Chinese comply.
The report, released Thursday, catalogs a broad range of persistent human rights abuses, from the widespread use of the death penalty and the extraction of organs from executed prisoners for transplants, to the persecution of civil rights activists and new methods to rein in the media and censor the Internet. The report also said Beijing is forcing people from homes to make way for Olympic-related construction projects.
"Serious human rights violations continue to be reported across the country, fueling instability and discontent," the London-based group's report said. "Grass-roots human rights activists continue to be detained and imprisoned, and official controls over the media and the Internet are growing tighter."
Amnesty International called on the Chinese government to enact reforms. It also urged the IOC and the Olympics "to put pressure on Chinese authorities" to release political prisoners, take steps toward ending the death penalty and repeal restrictions on the free flow of information.
Though many of the ills cited by the group have been endemic for years in China, the report underscores an uncomfortable contradiction: While the world was promised that a Beijing Games would bolster respect for human rights, the Communist leadership appears to be digging in its heels.
Over the past three years, Chinese leaders have mounted the most sustained clampdown on dissent since the quelling of the Tiananmen Square democracy movement in 1989. Aside from political and religious dissidents, the government has taken steps to intimidate new groups, such as activist lawyers and scholars, while aggressively scouring the Internet for political essayists and firing and detaining reporters and editors.
The suppression campaign stands in contrast to China's continued buildup of a vibrant economy and a dynamic society with a burgeoning middle class — changes Beijing hopes to showcase at the Olympics.
In bidding for the games in 2001, Chinese leaders promised IOC members that the Olympics would lead to an improved climate for human rights and media freedoms.
Original: Chia: Human Rights abuses