Journalists beaten, detained, threatened, not allowed to go to certain places and regions: this is how the Chinese government breaks its promise of freedom for the international media before and during the Olympics. According to an article in the Globe and Mail:
In 2001, as it was bidding for the right to hold the Olympics, China promised the international media would enjoy “complete freedom to report when they come to China” for the Olympics. Five years later, the Chinese government announced that foreign journalists could freely conduct interviews with any consenting Chinese citizen on any “political, economic, social and cultural matters” from Jan. 1, 2007 to Oct. 17, 2008. Both of those promises have been repeatedly violated, and media freedom has deteriorated in China since mid-2007, according to the report by Human Rights Watch, an independent human-rights organization based in New York.
The Human Rights Watch report, titled “China’s Forbidden Zones“, is available from the Human Rights Watch website. Since their website is blocked in China, I’ve made the “summary and recommendations” part of it available for download here, too (PDF).
