China Is Losing the Human Rights Race

When China won the right to host the 2008 Olympics, it was due in good part to human rights pledges. These included a specific commitment of “complete freedom” to report for the global media. Beijing made these pledges after losing its first bid to host in 1993, largely because of the Tiananmen Square crackdown.

In his final presentation to win the Games, Beijing Mayor and Bidding Committee president Liu Qi proclaimed that winning the Olympics would “benefit the further development of our human rights cause.”

Yet the past year has seen a steady deterioration of human rights in China. Outspoken human rights leaders have been jailed or put under house arrest, lawyers taking sensitive cases (such as those of Tibetan protestors) threatened and attacked, petitioners kicked out of Beijing, and journalists (domestic and foreign) harassed and detained.

It is a far cry from the early hopes of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). A leading IOC member, Dick Pound, said that Beijing’s “presentation to IOC members was an acknowledgment of the concerns expressed in many parts of the world regarding its record on human rights, coupled with a pre-emptive suggestion that the IOC could help increase progress on such matters by awarding the Games to China.”

Read the rest of this Times Online opinion piece by Human Rights Watch Media Director Minky Worden here.