The PEN Center has issued
a report about the dismal lot of writers in China. The Chinese government has failed to live up to its promises to increase human rights protections
before the Beijing Olympics.
In order to win the privilege of hosting the 2008 Summer Olympics, the People's Republic of China pledged to improve its human rights record. This pledge included specific commitments to expand press freedom and protect such fundamental rights as the right to freedom of expression as it is guaranteed under international law and China's own constitution.
On December 10, 2007, PEN American Center, PEN Canada and the Independent Chinese PEN Center launched "We Are Ready for Freedom of Expression," a campaign aimed at holding China's leadership to these commitments. PEN’s campaign specifically called on the Chinese government to:
* release all writers and journalists currently imprisoned and stop detaining, harassing, and censoring writers and journalists in China;
* end Internet censorship and reform laws used to imprison writers and journalists and suppress freedom of expression; and
* abide by its pledge that "there will be no restrictions on media reporting and movement of journalists up to and including the Olympic Games."
Seven months later, we are unable to report significant improvements in any of these areas.
What we have witnessed instead has been a grinding and relentless campaign to jail or silence prominent dissident voices, including many of our colleagues from the Independent Chinese PEN Center, and new and brazen efforts to restrict or control domestic and international press. This report, issued one month before the Olympics open in Beijing, summarizes this discouraging lack of progress. It also offers glimpses of the vast, intricate nature of the suppression of human rights in China -- visits to families of targeted dissidents, interference with personal cell phones and computers, waylaying individuals on their way to meetings and banquets; niggling, widespread surveillance and dogged harassment often followed by detention, arrest, and in some cases, very long prison sentences.
It's a pretty depressing report. China not improved its human rights' status before they Olympics; in fact, it appears to have really cracked down on writers instead. They are jailed, harassed and spied upon. The situation is appalling.
