Beijing Olympics 2008: Winning Press Freedom - World Press ...

Beijing Olympics 2008: Winning Press Freedom
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I advise journalists to continue to do what they have been doing, but even more so. They
should focus not just on China's repressive policies toward the Tibetans or the Uighurs,
but toward its own people. They should call on China's leaders to live up not only to their
international commitments, but also to the stipulations in China's own constitution, whose
Article 43 calls for freedom of speech and press. And they should continue to question
Chinese officials about journalist colleagues in prison.
Journalists, who are read by millions, can have a great impact on what happens in China
and be a powerful force in the struggle for human rights - much more so than professors,
whose books are read by a few other professors and, maybe, their students.
At the same time as they report on China's growing economic, military and international
stature, journalists should also describe the discontent, repression and environmental
degradation that have accompanied the country's economic development and that have
worsened in recent years.
Reporters at the Olympics in Beijing should not only point out China's rise as a modern
great power, should not only describe the athletic achievements, and not only report on
China's denial of freedom to the Tibetans and Uighurs, they should write about the denial
of freedom to its own citizens. In this age of globalization, the international media have a
major role to play in showing that no matter how powerful the country may become, its
human rights violations against minorities and especially its own people cannot be hidden.
The media's exposure of China's human rights violations can help exert international
pressure on China to live up to its own international commitments.
China does respond to outside pressure as seen with its signing of the two UN covenants.
We should continue to engage with China, participate in the Olympics, and speak in a
moderate voice, but we should also continue to criticize China's human rights abuses. We
should emphatically point out the failure of China's government to fulfil its own voluntarily
made promises to improve rights in order to win its bid to host the Olympics.
There is a danger that China's tight controls and suppression of human rights advocates,
imposed to ensure stability and peace for the Olympics may once the Games are over
become the new norm. Even more worrisome is that the worldwide protests against
China's policies in Tibet and Xinjiang have sparked a virile form of nationalism among
China's youth, who have vociferously expressed public antagonism toward foreign critics
and efforts to boycott the Olympics. Of the public intellectuals who signed the petition
against China's policy in Tibet, not one was below the age of 30.
Despite the explosion of antagonism expressed by the youth against Western critics, we
have to accept the fact that China has once again become a major power and we should
do all we can to incorporate it into the world community, not only economically, but
politically and culturally. The West must stay engaged in dialogue with Chinese leaders, no
matter how tense the relationship may become. Otherwise, instead of the 2008 Olympics
marking China's recognition as a modern power, it may come to enshrine hostility to the
modern world it so wants to join.