China has failed to improve its human rights record in the run-up to next month’s Olympics, with the government intensifying its crackdown on activists in recent years, Amnesty International (AI) charged in a report to be released today.
Amnesty said that in the last year alone, thousands of petitioners, reformists and others were arrested as part of a government campaign to “clean up” Beijing before the games, which open on Aug. 8. It said many of those arrested have been sentenced to manual labor without trial.
Chinese human rights activists have been targeted elsewhere in the country as well, Amnesty said in its report.
It cited the case of Sichuan-based activist Huang Qi, who was formally arrested earlier this month on charges of possessing state secrets. The case, though, is believed to stem from his work helping the families of children killed in May’s earthquake bring a legal case against local authorities, Amnesty said.
The organization said the games, touted by Chinese and Olympic officials alike as a way to help expand freedoms in the authoritarian country, have instead led the government to muzzle critics in hopes of presenting an image of harmony and stability to the outside world.
“By continuing to persecute and punish those who speak out for human rights, the Chinese authorities have lost sight of the promises they made when they were granted the games seven years ago,” said Roseann Rife, a deputy director in Asia for the London-based group. “The Chinese authorities are tarnishing the legacy of the games.”
An after-hours duty officer at China’s Foreign Ministry had no immediate comment on the report, although the Chinese government routinely denies such allegations, saying it has promoted human rights by reforming the legal system and raising living standards of hundreds of millions of people.
In a recent shift, the government announced it was setting up special protest zones during the games.
The Amnesty report also took aim at China’s suppressive media censorship, noting that some foreign journalists have been harassed by authorities.
It also claimed the government had expanded its “re-education through labor” program under which security forces arrest people and sentence them to manual labor without trial.
Amnesty accused the International Olympic Committee of showing a “reluctance” to pressure China publicly on its human rights record.
Elsewhere in the report, the group welcomed China’s move last year to restore the Supreme People’s Court’s role in approving death sentences. But it criticized the government, which says the number of executions has declined, for withholding data on death penalty cases.
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
RIGHTS FEARS: A protester said Beijing would use the embassy to catch and send Hong Kongers to China, while a lawmaker said Chinese agents had threatened Britons Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday protested at a site earmarked for Beijing’s controversial new embassy in London over human rights and security concerns. The new embassy — if approved by the British government — would be the “biggest Chinese embassy in Europe,” one lawmaker said earlier. Protester Iona Boswell, a 40-year-old social worker, said there was “no need for a mega embassy here” and that she believed it would be used to facilitate the “harassment of dissidents.” China has for several years been trying to relocate its embassy, currently in the British capital’s upmarket Marylebone district, to the sprawling historic site in the
‘IMPOSSIBLE’: The authors of the study, which was published in an environment journal, said that the findings appeared grim, but that honesty is necessary for change Holding long-term global warming to 2°C — the fallback target of the Paris climate accord — is now “impossible,” according to a new analysis published by leading scientists. Led by renowned climatologist James Hansen, the paper appears in the journal Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development and concludes that Earth’s climate is more sensitive to rising greenhouse gas emissions than previously thought. Compounding the crisis, Hansen and colleagues argued, is a recent decline in sunlight-blocking aerosol pollution from the shipping industry, which had been mitigating some of the warming. An ambitious climate change scenario outlined by the UN’s climate
BACK TO BATTLE: North Korean soldiers have returned to the front lines in Russia’s Kursk region after earlier reports that Moscow had withdrawn them following heavy losses Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday pored over a once-classified map of vast deposits of rare earths and other critical minerals as part of a push to appeal to US President Donald Trump’s penchant for a deal. The US president, whose administration is pressing for a rapid end to Ukraine’s war with Russia, on Monday said he wanted Ukraine to supply the US with rare earths and other minerals in return for financially supporting its war effort. “If we are talking about a deal, then let’s do a deal, we are only for it,” Zelenskiy said, emphasizing Ukraine’s need for security guarantees
RSS