The Human Rights Blog

The international human rights organization Amnesty International has issued an urgent action asking its supporters to write to Yahoo!'s chief yahoos asking for their help in assuring the release of journalist Shi Tao.

Shi Tao was arrested after Yahoo! provided the Chinese government account holder information on him. Tao was accused of �illegally providing state secrets to foreign entities� by using his Yahoo email account and sending an email summarizing an internal Communist Party directive to a foreign source. The Communist Party directive had warned Chinese journalists of possible social unrest during the anniversary of the June 4 Movement (in memory of the Tiananmen crackdown), and directed them not to fuel it via media reports.

Amnesty considers Shi Tao a prisoner of conscience.

The urgent action is available at http://web.amnesty.org/pages/chn-310106-action-eng

I don't know that I fully agree with boycotting the winter Olympics - there is something to be said about holding international events in the most repressive of countries - but this should provide some food for thought.

Ten Reasons Why the Free World with The
Leadership of America Must Boycott the 2008
Olympic Games in Communist China
By Demetrius Klitou

1) Human rights are practically non-existent in Communist China
Religious persecution, imprisonment and murder of non-violent political dissidents, torture,
organ harvesting and sentences to hard labour are widespread.

AS-305-2006
December 8, 2006

International Human Rights Day Statement for 2006

In addition to the general statement issued by the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) for International Human Rights Day on December 10, we are also making the brief comments below on the human rights situation in several Asian countries. A more comprehensive report will be available soon.

As the countdown to the Beijing Olympics reaches a crescendo, reports are mounting that China is reneging on its commitments to free speech and access to information, and that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has failed to ensure that China’s commitments be fully implemented. The last violation to be reported is that of internet censorship: foreign journalists covering the Olympics found they could not access human rights websites and news.

“Through its continued silence, the IOC is condoning the repeated violations by China of fundamental human rights and of the commitments it made to be awarded the 2008 Olympics.” says Dr. Agnès Callamard, ARTICLE 19 Executive Director.

“The actions of the Chinese authorities will surprise very few. But the greatest mockery to the Olympic spirit must be that orchestrated by the IOC itself – the international committee responsible on paper for holding to the highest level the value of fair play and human rights.”

ARTICLE 19 calls on governments and National Olympic Committees to demand that the IOC stands up for the Olympic spirit. In particular, the IOC must protest clearly and transparently to the Chinese authorities for relegating on its promises and abusing freedom of the press and the free flow of information, and request as a matter of urgency that access to all censored websites be immediately established.

Background:

Journalists from around the world have arrived in Beijing only to find out that their internet connection is censored by the Chinese government – a violation of the commitments China made in winning the Olympics.

Recent reports, denied by he IOC, have stated that IOC officials acquiesced and agreed to China’s demands for maintaining controls over access to information and the continued blocking of sites from ARTICLE 19, Reporters Without Borders, Amnesty International, BBC, and many others.

Despite these apparent reversals by China, IOC President Jacques Rogge recently commented that “For the first time, foreign media will be able to report freely and publish their work freely in China. There will be no censorship on the Internet.”

The head of the IOC Press Commission Kevan Gosper is said to have stated that he would be surprised if Rogge did not know that China had no intention of allowing free speech. Chief spokesman for the Beijing Olympic organising committee Sun Weide also conceded that censorship would not stop, “It has been our policy to provide the media with convenient and sufficient access to the Internet” (emphasis added).

Latest coverage on the countdown to the Beijing Olympics and the increasing abuses of freedom of expression and the right to information can be found at www.article19.org

ARTICLE 19
6-8 Amwell Street London EC1R 1UQ United Kingdom
Tel: +44 20 7278 9292 - Fax: +44 20 7278 7660 - info@article19.org - www.article19.org

Geneva-Paris, February 13, 2009. The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, a joint programme of the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) and the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), expresses its deepest concern about an extremely worrying recommendation that was included in the outcome report of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of China, and which might be interpreted as encouraging the repression against human rights defenders.

On February 11, 2009, the Human Rights Council’s UPR Working Group issued its outcome report on China, to be adopted by the Human Rights Council in June 2009, after the Working Group conducted its review of China’s human rights record on February 9, 2009.

The Observatory regrets that China rejected many of the recommendations made by UN Member States to implement specific measures and reforms to advance human rights in China, including recommendations to protect human rights defenders (such as to investigate reports of harassment and detention of human rights defenders, including alleged mistreatment while in police custody, with a view to ending impunity), and merely adopted recommendations that were overly vague.

The Observatory is all the more concerned that China accepted a recommendation formulated by Cuba, according to which China should “maintain, in strict compliance of law, to avoid the impunity for people who are qualifying themselves as human rights defenders with the objective of attacking the interests of the state and the people of China”.
“This recommendation is unacceptable, and sends a very bad signal to Chinese human rights defenders who are strongly repressed on a daily basis due to their peaceful human rights activities, and as such is a flagrant violation of the provisions of the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights Defenders, adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on December 9, 1998”, said Eric Sottas, OMCT Secretary General.

The Observatory recalls in particular that as of January 8, 2009, 101 signatories to the “Charter 08”, launched on December 9, 2008 on the Internet and calling for political reforms that promote human rights and democracy, have been questioned, summoned and intimidated by the police in 19 municipalities and provinces.

“Over the past year in China, the space for dissent shrank, and crackdown on dissenting or critical voices continued unabated. The situation has even worsened lately. The Cuban recommendation, to be adopted by a United Nations body, opens the door to further repression of human rights defenders in China”, said Souhayr Belhassen, FIDH President.

The Observatory calls upon the member States of the Human Rights Council to bring amendments to the outcome report within two weeks, demanding the cancellation of the recommendation on human rights defenders formulated by Cuba, and - more generally - of these which are contrary to the UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders and other human rights standards and conventions ratified by China.

For further information, please contact:

OMCT : Delphine Reculeau, + 41 22 809 49 39
FIDH : Gaël Grilhot / Karine Appy, + 33 1 43 55 25 18