Media advisory
China: crack down on activists worse because of the Olympics
Brussels (2 April) – A new report launched today by Amnesty International states that the current wave of repression by Chinese authorities is happening not in spite of the Olympics but because of the Games. This is the latest in a series of five reports documenting human rights violations in the country ahead of the August Games in Beijing. It concludes that the Chinese government has failed to deliver significant improvements in the internal human rights situation, despite assurances to the International Olympic Committee and the wider international community that it would do so.
Amnesty International’s report documents specific cases of activists and rights’ lawyers harassed, arbitrarily detained and beaten by the authorities, as well as increased controls over freedom of expression and censorship of the media. It also sheds light on several government tactics to silence those who dare to speak out on human rights, in particular the use of ‘security threats’ as a pretext for crackdown on peaceful activists and the use of the ‘Re-education through Labor” system to ‘clean up’ the city in the run up to the games.
The full report “The Olympics countdown: crackdown on activists threatens Olympics legacy“, is available Download PDF attachement