China: Police Detain Would-Be Olympic Protesters

13 Aug

Posted by Jim in Human Rights

The Chinese government is detaining a rights activist who applied to demonstrate legally in designated “protest zones” established for the Beijing Olympics, Human Rights Watch said today.

Ji Sizun, 58, a self-described grassroots legal activist from Fujian province, was arrested on August 11, 2008. On August 8, Ji had applied to the Deshengmenwai police station in Beijing’s Xicheng District for a permit to hold a protest in one of the city’s three designated “protest zones.” In his application, Ji stated that the protest would call for greater participation of Chinese citizens in political processes, and denounce rampant official corruption and abuses of power. He was arrested after checking back at the police station on the status of his application, witnesses told Human Rights Watch.

“The Chinese government should immediately release Ji Sizun and anyone else detained by police while trying to exercise their basic rights,” said Sophie Richardson, Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. “The protest application process clearly isn’t about giving people greater freedom of expression, but making it easier for the police to suppress it.”

Link to HRW

2 Responses

Daily Bagel

August 14th, 2008 at 4:15 pm
1

There’s a story in The New York Times, too, about how popular the protest zones are:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/14/sports/olympics/14protest.html

In the American media, we rely on print journalists to report stories like these. The broadcasters who carry the Olympics will not touch human rights issues over the next two weeks.

I wish that more would be said at an official level about issues like these. The irony, of course, is that the practice — greatly expanded over the past eight years — of establishing “free speech zones” undercuts American credibility on this issue.
vanessa

August 14th, 2008 at 9:29 pm
2

Thanks for posting this Jim, and for the link to the article, Daily Bagel. There is also a collection of nonprofit research on the Olympics/China on the site I work for, IssueLab. http://www.issuelab.org/closeup/Aug_2008

It is very frustrating– I figure that for every 1 incident like this I read about, there are, I don’t know, 2 more, 10 more, 50 more, that are going unreported due to the dangerous situation journalists and would-be sources are in.

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