A tarnished performance

Sunday, Aug. 31, 2008 | 2:08 a.m.

In the days before the Summer Olympics last month in Beijing, communist officials pledged to give the country’s citizens more freedom.

President Hu Jintao told foreign journalists that China would “continue to pursue comprehensive reforms, including reforms of the political system.”

As an example, party leaders rolled out plans to allow dissidents access to three “protest parks” during the games.

Writer and dissident Liu Xiaobo, a veteran of the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations, said China had “a great opportunity to show improvements in human rights and make a better international image for China.”

Human rights activists hoped things would change because of Chinese officials’ fears of looking bad on the world stage. But China’s “reforms” were nothing more than window dressing. For example, USA Today reported last week:

• The Chinese government not only denied all requests to protest during the Olympics, but officials also sentenced a 79-year-old grandmother to “reeducation” in the form of a year of labor for simply applying to hold a protest. She wanted to protest what she felt was unjust compensation for her house, which was taken by the Chinese government to make way for the Olympics.

• A day before the opening ceremonies, police removed dissident Zeng Jinyan and her infant daughter from Beijing and returned them a day before the games closed. Zeng is a blogger whose work is banned in China, and her husband is jailed human rights activist Hu Jia.

• Zhang Mingxuan, head of the China House Church Alliance, and his wife were arrested two days before the Olympics opened. Zhang, known as “Pastor Bike” for riding across China on a bicycle, is being investigated for his role in developing and distributing wristbands in conjunction with the Olympics that encouraged people to pray for China.

Liu, who has endured years of arrests, threats and harassment, lamented the actions of the Communist Party, noting that “the government stressed security and the old set of control methods.”

Change was supposed to come because the “world was watching.” The world did watch, yet little, if anything, changed in regard to human rights. The world should keep its focus on China and press for human rights reforms.