Posted on 11/30/2007 5:21:47 AM PST by TigerLikesRooster
Rights group lashes IOC chief over China controls
Fri Nov 30, 1:11 AM ET
The International Olympics Committee has failed to ensure that China honors promised media freedoms ahead of Beijing's 2008 Olympic Games, a press rights group has claimed.
In an open letter to IOC President Jacques Rogge, Paris-based Reporters Without Borders recounted cases of foreign reporters briefly detained and roughed up while investigating village protests and other sensitive topics.
China has vowed to set aside long-standing restrictions on foreign reporters before and during the Games, allowing them to roam the country without the usual need for official approval -- a rule that many reporters have ignored anyway.
That relaxation took force from early this year, but local officials and police have often proved reluctant to allow citizens to air complaints to foreign media about lost land, corruption and other sources of discontent.
Reporters Without Borders has now bluntly told Rogge that the IOC bears the blame for this.
"Mr. Rogge, it is your silence that has unfortunately made all these abuses possible," the letter issued on the group's Web site (www.rsf.org) late on Thursday said, urging him to publicly press Beijing on media freedom.
"A failure to rise to this key challenge would represent an enormous setback in the history of the Olympic movement."
Earlier this month, New York-based Human Rights Watch also criticized the IOC, saying the international custodian of the Games should press China harder on journalists' rights.
The IOC was not available for immediate comment.
Chinese Foreign Ministry officials, who oversee foreign reporters in the country, have said they have made strenuous efforts to ensure local officials abide by the rules.
The relaxed rules will expire after the Games, and they do not extend to Chinese reporters, or to the local assistants, researchers and translators who work with foreign media.
(Reporting by Chris Buckley; Editing by Nick Macfie)
Ping!
The IOC will coddle Commie China
THe IOC still refuses to honor the Israeli athletes asassinated at Munich in 1972....because it may upset the Terrorstinians and other terrorist states
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