Going by the words of the State Council information office minister Cai Wu it can be speculated that the new rules for the foreign press that were introduced in January as part of the preparations for next August’s Beijing Olympics could remain in force after the games are over.
Speaking at a news conference Cai said: “No document says that when this new regulation expires on 17 October next year we are going to return to the previous regulations. If practice shows that it will help the international community know better about China and if it is in the interests of China’s efforts of reform and opening up, it is not at all necessary for us to change a good policy.â€
Reporters Without Borders said it took note of the statements and takes it to be “a promise like so many other promises that have been made.†Reports have made it clear that the organizers of the Beijing Olympics and the Chinese security apparatus have decided to control journalists very closely before and during the games. The authorities are believed to state, that
they were planning to compile files on journalists and reserved the right to turn them back even if they were accredited by National Olympic Committees.
The regulations over writers and journalists in China saw the "40:242 - We Are Ready for Freedom of Expression," campaign that took place on the International Human Rights Day and which challenged the Chinese government to release all of the writers and journalists it is holding in prisons before the August 8, 2008 opening of the Olympic Games. In August 2007, the Chinese government launched a major publicity offensive for the Olympics under the slogan "We Are Ready." The writers' campaign, a PEN initiative led by the Independent Chinese PEN Center and PEN centers in the US and Canada, mocks that public relations effort by reminding the world that China continues to deny its citizens the fundamental right to freedom of expression and suggesting that Chinese authorities have 242 days until the opening ceremonies to release 40 writers and journalists currently languishing in Chinese prisons.
The WAN resolution also called for the Chinese authorities "to release from prison the dozens of journalists serving long jail sentences for freely exercising their profession." According to WAN, at least 30 journalists and 50 cyber-dissidents are currently in Chinese prisons. Some of them since the 1980s. The government blocks access to thousands for news websites. It jams the Chinese, Tibetan and Uyghur-language programmes of 10 international radio stations. After focusing on websites and chat forums, the authorities are now concentrating on blogs and video-sharing sites. China’s blog services incorporate all the filters that block keywords considered “subversive†by the censors. The law severely punishes “divulging state secrets,†“subversion†and “defamation†- charges that are regularly used to silence the most outspoken critics. Although the rules for foreign journalists have been relaxed, it is still impossible for the international media to employ Chinese journalists or to move about freely in Tibet and Xinjiang.
In an open letter to Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee by Robert Ménard, Secretary-General RSF, found that the games organizers announced that they were going to conduct ID checks on all accredited journalists.
Yang Minghui, the deputy head of the games accreditation office, defended this decision as a security requirement, as if journalists could pose a threat or be potential terrorists. "If they do not pass the tests, their accreditation requests will be refused and the process will stop there," he said, adding that "the aim is to eliminate people who pose problems for the security of the games." He also brought out in his letter that the Other Olympic cities compiled files on journalists in the past, but this was for organizational purposes and never with the intention of refusing entry on grounds which - as everyone must realize in the case of Beijing - are political.
Reporters Without Borders hailed the adoption of new rules for the foreign press last January. But, 11 months later, the results are negative. It is true that the foreign ministry has in some cases tried to help foreign journalists who had been detained or attacked, but 65 cases of foreign journalists being arrested, beaten, prevented from doing a report or threatened since the new rules were supposed to take effect on 1 January have been registered by RSF. And the day before the minister’s statement, an Associated Press reporter was detained in southern China.
In 2007 the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China (FCCC) received reports of 180 violations of the rules, ranging from surveillance of journalists to detentions. Jocelyn Ford heads the press freedom committee of FCCC agreed that the statement of the minister is indeed encouraging but further added, “we are still waiting to see whether the regulations giving foreign correspondents reporting freedom will be more fully respected by Chinese authorities.â€
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and RSF called the recent crackdown on "fake" foreign journalists ahead of next year's Olympics in Beijing a pretext to block critical reporters from covering the Games. CPJ said "Allegations of 'fake' reporting are a transparent justification for extending the Chinese government's strict control of press coverage, in violation of all their promises to the contrary.†WAN is planning an international conference March with IFEX members RSF and the World Press Freedom Committee, as well as Human Rights in China, dedicated to the press freedom situation in China.
CPJ expressed alarm that the government's plan, which includes amassing records of thousands of foreign journalists seeking Olympics accreditation, is a pretext to block critical reporters from covering the Games. And it isn’t the first time that a Chinese official has hinted that the former regulations, under which foreign reporters had to request permission every time they wanted to travel within the country or interview Chinese citizens, would not be restored after the Olympics.
