China to censor Internet during Games: organisers

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

BEIJING (AFP) — China plunged into another Olympic controversy on Wednesday as it announced that the thousands of foreign reporters covering the Games would have to endure Internet censorship.

A journalist works on a laptop computer during a Beijing 2008 Olympics press conference

The backflip on allowing unfettered web access was met with apparent surprise and disappointment from the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which had previously hailed the supposed media freedoms the Games had brought to China.

"During the Olympic Games we will provide sufficient access to the Internet for reporters," Beijing Olympic organising committee spokesman Sun Weide said.

However "sufficient access" falls short of the complete Internet freedoms for foreign reporters that China's communist authorities had promised in the run-up to the Games, which begin on August 8.

Sun specified sites linked to the Falungong spiritual movement, which is outlawed in China, as ones that would remain censored for the foreign press at Olympic venues.

He did not identify any others but reporters trying to surf the Internet at the main press centre for the Games on Wednesday found a wide array of sites deemed sensitive by China's rulers to be out-of-bounds.

These included sites belonging to Tibet 's government-in-exile and Amnesty International, as well as those that had information on the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in which the military used deadly force to crush democracy protests.

The head of the IOC's press commission, Kevan Gosper, told AFP he would take the matter up with Chinese officials.

"I will speak with the Chinese authorities to advise them of the restraints and to see what their reaction is," he said.

Australian Olympic team chief John Coates, who is also an IOC member, expressed frustration with China's Internet about-face, pointing out that the Chinese authorities had gone back on one of their "key" Olympic promises.

"It certainly is disappointing... I think it's a matter that the IOC will take seriously," Coates told reporters.

In an exclusive interview with AFP two weeks ago, IOC president Jacques Rogge insisted there would be no censorship of the Internet.

"For the first time, foreign media will be able to report freely and publish their work freely in China," he said.

"There will be no censorship on the Internet."

The Internet saga was the latest in a long line of controversies to have tarnished the Olympic build-up for China's communist rulers, who are hoping the Games will be an historic event marking the nation's rise as a world power.

China's government has in particular come under sustained criticism for what many say has been a reneging of pledges to improve human rights ahead of the Games.

In a move likely to anger China, US President George W. Bush met with five Chinese dissidents in Washington on Tuesday and told them he would raise human rights concerns with Chinese officials when he attends the Olympics.

"The president assured them that he will carry the message of freedom as he travels to Beijing for the Games," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said in a statement.

Another event to take some of the shine off China's Olympic build-up was the police reaction to the chaos surrounding the final sale of Games tickets in Beijing last week, when more than 50,000 people queued up.

Police admitted they were overwhelmed by the scenes, and footage of them roughly treating Hong Kong journalists trying to cover the event was broadcast around the world.

On Monday, Beijing's notorious pollution hit the world headlines as athletes from around the world began arriving in the Chinese capital as a thick smog reduced visibility across the capital to a few hundred metres (yards).