China isn’t living up to its pre-Olympic commitments

China isn’t living up to its pre-Olympic commitments

Put simply, China has a long way to go before it is ready to host the 2008 Summer Olympics.

And we’re not talking about building dormitories or running tracks or swimming pools. We‘re talking about building the kind of open society that should be a prerequisite to hosting the Olympic Games.

A decade ago, people like us were saying that giving China’s repressive regime such a plum as the Olympics sent a wrong message. Hosting the Games, we said, was an honor to be earned by showing a commitment to the ideals of world peace and individual freedom that are supposed to be intrinsic to the Olympic movement.

Exactly what China told the Olympics committee to set its mind at ease — over the voices of critics and human rights activists — isn’t known. The contract between the committee and China has never been made public.

But, generally, it is known that China promised to improve its air quality so that athletes would be able to compete to the best of their ability. There was something about some level of recognition of freedom of the press. And a book recently put out by Human Rights Watch reports that China claimed that awarding it the Games would facilitate human rights progress.

Today, athletes who will be going to China anticipate having to wear masks during the time they spend in smog-shrouded Beijing. So much for that promise.

False signal

In an apparent nod to press freedom, China marked the New Year by releasing Ching Cheong and Yu Huafeng, to journalist who spent years in prison on trumped up charges. But at least two dozen other journalist remain behind bars.

Meanwhile the government has announced new crackdowns on unapproved Internet traffic and the arrest of human rights agitators has continued unabated.

Human Rights Watch reports that writer L√º Gengsong was sentenced Feb. 4 to four years in prison for “inciting subversion against state power.” He is the sixth high profile dissident arrested on those charges in less than a year.

Ironically, one of those was Hu Jia, who was taken from his home Dec. 27, shortly after he gave webcam testimony to the European Parliament in which he expressed his desire that 2008 be “the year of human rights in China.” That hardly seems subversive. Indeed, it seems to be in keeping with what Chinese officials told the Olympics committee that this Olympic year would be.

Another, Yang Chunlin, an activist from Heilongjiang province, was arrested last July for his role in circulating a petition among farmers that declared, “We Want Human Rights, not the Olympics,”

It is past time for the Olympics Committee to remind China of the deal it made to win its Olympic bid. And, as the Washington Post recently suggested, it is time for President Bush and other Western leaders to speak up. No one is suffering any illusions about teams pulling out of the Olympics as they have in the past. But, certainly, China would be embarrassed by the absence of world leaders when it gives its big Olympics Party this summer. China should not be rewarded for its bad behavior.