China Cracks Down on Activists, Media, Amnesty Says
30/04/2007 |
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China is intensifying a crackdown on domestic media and human rights activists ahead of the 2008 Olympic games, Amnesty International said in a report today.
Further media controls and a series of detentions have diluted China's efforts to improve its human rights record including looser controls on foreign journalists and an extra layer of judicial review for death sentences.
President Hu Jintao ordered a further tightening of controls over domestic media and the Internet in January, including telling officials to strictly enforce a new penalty points system for print media, the report said. Forced evictions for Olympic projects and the arrests of related protesters should be a concern of the International Olympic Committee, London-based Amnesty said.
``China's constitution guarantees protection of human rights and China's government is gradually increasing legal rights of all citizens as it continues to develop the economy,'' the foreign ministry said in a faxed statement today. ``China's human rights situation is not as bad as this so-called report paints it.''
Chinese authorities last month shut down eight websites providing news broadcasts, including wwww.ccztv.com, in a move to crackdown on unauthorized Web newscasts, Amnesty said.
Officials are also going after human rights activists who turn to the media to aid their campaigns, it said. Lawyer and rights campaigner Gao Zhisheng, who was in police detention for four months last year, continues to be under constant police scrutiny, the report said. Gao became famous for writing an open letter to President Hu in 2005, calling his attention to police and prison official abuse of practitioners of Falungong, a banned religious group.
Police also routinely send recalcitrant activists to ``re- education'' labor camps, Amnesty said. ``Such patterns of police control, surveillance and arbitrary detention are increasingly being employed against activists and members of their families in Beijing and other parts of China, particularly during significant public events,'' the report said.
(Source: Bloomberg.com)
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