Preparing for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, China's Authorities Go After Human-Rights Advocates
The most vulnerable victims are the "undesirables," members of the lower rungs of society, who are nameless and faceless to the outside world, and so least protected. Li Xiaorong, professor of political philosophy at the University of Maryland, describes a systematic rounding up of petitioners, the homeless, street vendors, and beggars from the streets of the capital. These people risk being forcibly sent home to rural areas, sentenced to re-education camps and detention centers, and even being confined to mental hospitals and psychiatric wards. "The government doesn't want these poor and downtrodden coming onto the streets of Beijing in the run-up to the Olympics," says Li. "It wouldn't look good for the image of China as a powerful and wealthy country."
Beatings. The small number of brave lawyers who dare to accept sensitive cases face beatings, detentions, imprisonment, and the loss of their licenses to practice law. Some have been brutally attacked by hei shehui, or black society, thugs used by the police to hand out extralegal punishments. Li Heping, a lawyer who has defended environmental activists, Christians, and other lawyers, was attacked last year in his office park by 10 men. Li told associates that the unidentified men threw a bag over his head, pushed him into the back seat of a car, and took him to the basement of a house, where he was beaten and shocked with electric batons for four hours. He was later driven into the woods and thrown out of the car.
One of the most prominent cases is that of Chen Guangcheng, a blind, self-trained lawyer and activist, who helped farmers in Shandong province fight forced sterilization and late-term abortions. Chen was sentenced in late 2006 to four years and three months in prison on what many say were trumped-up charges, after a trial marked by harassment of witnesses and detention of his lawyers, who were prevented from appearing in court.
Chinese leaders show no sign of letting up. And human-rights activists complain that there has been little meaningful pressure from the International Olympic Committee or participating countries. For its part, the U.S. State Department says it is "following closely" the "disturbing" detention of Hu and has raised his case with Chinese authorities. And the European Parliament last month passed a resolution calling for Hu's release and urging China "not to use the Olympic Games as a pretext to arrest and illegally detain and imprison dissidents, journalists, and human-rights activists."
"Futile." Beijing's official stance on its human-rights record has been to slap away any public criticisms as attempts to politicize the Olympics. On January 31, the state-run People's Daily defiantly stated: "Those who want to use the Olympics to discredit China, and those who think the Olympics will promote China to change in the way they 'hope', are doomed to be disappointed. Their efforts will be futile."
To the contrary, critics say that pressure can work, pointing to recent instances of China being influenced to get involved in diplomatic efforts concerning North Korea's nuclear programs and the conflict in Sudan's Darfur region. Earlier this month, U.S. film director Steven Spielberg quit as an artistic adviser to the Beijing Olympics, responding to criticism from activists such as actress Mia Farrow over China's continuing support for the government of Sudan. Farrow has called for an Olympics boycott and has said that Spielberg's promotion of the games in Beijing could make him a latter-day Leni Riefenstahl, who became known as Hitler's filmmaker for her glowing depiction of the 1936 Berlin games.
Just a few months before police burst into his home to take him away, Hu Jia predicted that the Communist Party would succeed in wiping out all dissent before the August 8 opening ceremony for the Beijing games. "By the time that day comes," he said, "there will be no sound at all." No sound, that is, other than the cheering crowds of Olympics spectators.
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