Before Olympics, a Call for Change; Chinese Dissidents, Foreign Appeals: Honor Rights Commitments

[DeepModem Mom]

WP: Before Olympics, a Call for Change
Chinese Dissidents Join Foreign Appeals for Beijing to Honor Rights Commitments
By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, August 8, 2007; Page A09


After this banner was posted on the Great Wall of China, six people, including three Americans, were detained. Some groups say China has not kept promises it made to secure the 2008 Games. (Students For A Free Tibet Via Associated Press)

BEIJING, Aug. 7 -- A group of prominent Chinese dissidents and intellectuals called on the Communist Party government Tuesday to honor its human rights commitments out of respect for the Olympic spirit and next summer's Beijing Games.

The unusually blunt appeal, in an open letter to the party's top three leaders, added respected Chinese voices to a chorus of foreign complaints over human rights abuses as China begins the one-year countdown to the Olympic Games scheduled to open here Aug. 8, 2008. The letter came as government officials are striving to make the Games an international endorsement of China's swift development under Communist Party rule.

The human rights group Amnesty International and the Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based press freedom organization, issued separate reports Tuesday lengthening the list of foreign criticisms. Both charged that the Chinese government had not carried out the pledges it made in 2001 to secure the Games, including improving human rights practices and loosening restrictions on press freedom....

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The open letter posted Tuesday on the Internet represented a different -- and perhaps more difficult -- challenge for Beijing. Signed by 40 Chinese men and women widely known for scholarly work or anti-government agitation, the appeal seemed harder to dismiss than complaints lodged by foreign groups....

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The Chinese government has violated promises it made to secure the Olympic Games, the letter said, by jailing dissidents, pushing poor people from their homes to build stadiums and keeping censorship in place for Chinese journalists and artists....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/07/AR2007080700659.html?nav=most_emailed

[madrchsod]

1. posted yesterday about the students for a free tibet

and it`s president Lhadon Tethong ..0 replys. these people put their lives on the line for freedom......

[DeepModem Mom]

2. Yes. This kind of post doesn't often get a lot of response.

I'm hoping posting at least calls some attention to what's going on.

[madrchsod]

3. she was arrested along with others !!

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2007/08/08/protest-china.html
3rd Canadian detained by China, student group says

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070807.wchin0807/BNStory/National/home
globeandmail.com: Canadian protesters held in China