China - Orwell's dream come true

Reuters

DOUBLE PLUS GOOD: Competitors ride through Tiananmen Square past the portrait of Chinese leader Mao Zedong

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Olympics 2008

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The Beijing Olympics can be encapsulated by the stories of four people: Michael Phelps, Usain Bolt, Wu Dianyuan and Wang Xiuying.

Phelps and Bolt are the names China and the International Olympic Committee would like you to remember; Wu and Wang the ones they would prefer you to forget.

Mrs Wu, 79, and Mrs Wang, 77, were evicted from their homes near Tianamen Square in 2001 to make way for a new development. Both walk with the aid of canes. Mrs Wang is blind in one eye. According to the New York Times, neither has ever spoken out against the government.

But when Chinese authorities said demonstrators would be allowed to protest at three specially designated parks during the Olympics, the pair, who have been shifted to ramshackle apartments on the outskirts of Beijing, applied to the Municipal Public Security Bureau for a permit to demonstrate. On their first visit to the bureau they were interrogated for 10 hours.

Undeterred they returned, five times in all, till on their last visit they were informed that they were no longer eligible to protest because they had been sentenced to a year's re-education through labour for "disturbing the peace". Their crime: applying for permits to protest.

It's the sort of logic that would have appealed to George Orwell, the creator of one of the best-known lines in political satire: "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." He would probably also have appreciated the press briefings at which Beijing Olympic organising committee spokesman Wang Wei and IOC spokeswoman Giselle Davies tried to justify the unjustifiable.

The briefings began with a veneer of respectability but descended into farce as it gradually became apparent to everyone, including Ms Davies, that Chinese authorities had no intention of honouring two of the promises they gave to secure the Games - that protest would be allowed and that foreign media would be free to report whatever they chose.

For reporters covering the Games themselves, the facilities have been superb: easy access to and from venues, smooth transport system, wireless internet connections allowing them to file stories without leaving their seats, and an army of smiling volunteers constantly on hand to assist.

But for those trying to investigate China's handling of human rights issues and Tibet it's been a different story. On Thursday, two Associated Press photographers covering a protest by pro-Tibetan activists were roughed up by plainclothes security officers, forced into cars and taken to a nearby building, where they were questioned before being released.

Memory cards from their cameras were confiscated. The week before, a British television reporter was detained by police when he tried to cover a protest by pro-Tibetan foreigners.

Sorry, said Mr Wang. Police mistook the AP photographers for protesters.

His finest hour came when he was asked if Western reporters were free to visit Tibet.

"Of course the media are free to go to Tibet," he said. "But as you know due to the recent riots that are happening in Tibet there is a limitation not only for the media but also for the general public to go to Tibet. So I think maybe you need approval, but in general the media in the past and the present and the future are free to go to Tibet."

Translation: you cannot go to Tibet.

Ms Davies' smile - an artifice as impressive as the grins synchronised swimmers maintain under water - cracked. The IOC did not comment on countries' sovereign issues, she said.

What did the IOC think about the fact that not one of the 77 groups that had applied for permission to stage a protest had been granted it?

"The IOC would have liked to have seen the protest zones genuinely being used but it's not an area that falls within our direct remit," she said through clenched teeth.

That was as close as the IOC came to publicly criticising China.

The odd thing was that this charade was not played out in a grey, authoritarian environment but in a lively, bustling city.

Beijing's inhabitants are not a cowed or sullen people. Shoppers can buy T-shirts that poke gentle fun at the government. The Bird's Nest stadium and the Water Cube are bold, exciting buildings that speak to the power of the human imagination, and glittering high- rises tell of their owners' individuality and ambition.

At her final press briefing Ms Davies said the IOC had no doubt it had made the right decision to give the 2008 Olympics to Beijing. The Games had helped the country to open up and to develop.

Everywhere you look there is evidence that that is true. But the cases of Mrs Wu and Mrs Wang demonstrate that China still has a long way to go till its people enjoy the rights and freedoms it says they do.

- © Fairfax NZ News