2008 Olympic Countdown and Global Pressure on China

Buy an ad on DigitalJournal.com

The '08 Olympics is an event that will bring global attention to the rapidly burgeoning country, but its many critics and its own track record for keeping to its promises could be hurting its chance to shine in the spotlight.

Six protesters were detained yesterday after they used ropes to climb down the side of the Great Wall and unfurled a banner which read "One World, One Dream, Free Tibet 2008" in both Chinese and English, playing on the 2008 Olympic Games slogan "One World, One Dream".

The protesters were all foreign nationals and part of the Students for a Free Tibet, who has been protesting and accuses the IOC of allowing the Chinese government to spread 'propaganda' about its 'illegal' occupation of Tibet.

To add fuel to the building fire, Amnesty International and the Committee to Protect Journalists released strongly worded reports indicating that time is running out for China to make good on it's plans to clean up its criticised human rights record and restrictive media censorship before the summer games.

Amnesty International Secretary General Irene Khan is quoted on the organization's website pointing out some of the positive progress, but heavily criticizing the negative aspects that it sees.

"Not only are we not seeing delivery on the promises made that the Olympics would help improve the human rights situation in China, but the police are using the pretext of the Olympics to extend the use of detention without trial. This is despite the fact that substantial reform or abolition of such methods has been on China's reform agenda for many years."

She is also quoted as ranking China's death penalty record "as the world's top executioner with an estimated 8,000 people killed in 2006."

The Committee to Protect Journalists says on its website that China is 'Falling Short' so far in its media policies.

CPJ finds that harsh constraints remain on the local press, 29 Chinese journalists are imprisoned, vast censorship rules are in place, and press attacks and harassment occur with impunity.

On Monday, members of Reporters Without Borders were detained after hanging a poster over the afternoon traffic depicting the olympic rings as handcuffs.

Australia Olympic Committee chief John Coates would not get drawn into discussing his feelings on whether he was disappointed in China's efforts so far and was quoted as saying "The Olympic movement is very pleased that the focus is going to be on China in the lead-up to the Games in the sporting and every other sense, including human rights. We hope there will be change, we hope there will be improvements, but at the end of the day we're not a government and we're not the United Nations."

It seems that China has a long way to go and one year is not a lot of time, but personally I would like to see China shine and prove to the world that it has cleaned up its act. Whether this can be done in time to meet everyone's satisfaction, probably depends on who we're talking about. Something tells me that there will always be groups out there who will never be satisfied with China's efforts and others who just want them to look bad regardless.

In the mean time we'll have to wait to see what happened to these latest protesters who haven't been heard from since they were detained.