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Freedom of the press at Olympics not assured

Things are starting to get strange in the run-up to the 2008 summer Olympic Games in China.

According to a recent news dispatch from Beijing by Guardian correspondent Jonathan Watts, "Beijing's Olympics organizers have promised that the international media will be allowed to travel freely around China by the time the games start in 2008."

Watts cites Britain's Minister for Culture Tessa Jowell as saying that this "assurance" was given to her by the head of the organizing committee, Liu Qi (劉淇).

This would naturally require "a loosening of some of the tightest restrictions on foreign journalists in the world," Watts said.

Watts went on to remind readers: "[Foreign] Correspondents are frequently detained by police and sent back to Beijing when they try to cover sensitive stories in the provinces."

Jowell, who recently visited Beijing as the UK Olympic minister, told Watts that she received a positive response when she raised the issue with her Chinese counterpart.

Was Jowell getting the runaround from Liu?

Just a few days later, a reporter for the Associated Press in Shanghai, Elaine Kurtenbach, gave a very different account of China's position: "China [has] tightened its control over the distribution of news by foreign agencies, further restricting international access to the already tightly regulated Chinese media market. The new measures took effect immediately upon being issued by the Xinhua news agency."

"The regulations give Xinhua broad authority over foreign news agencies, requiring them to distribute stories, photos and other services solely through Xinhua or entities authorized by Xinhua. The rules would affect the Associated Press, Reuters and other foreign news agencies seeking wider access to the rapidly expanding Chinese market," she said.

"China has long sought to limit foreign distribution of news inside the country while exercising harsh limits on domestic media that are often arbitrarily enforced by vaguely worded state security rules that mandate harsh penalties, including long prison terms, for violations," Kurtenback concluded.

Xinhua now says it has the right to select the news and information released by foreign news agencies in China and will delete any "news" it doesn't want printed inside the communist dictatorship.

Yet Jowell has publicly stated that Liu had given her a clear "assurance that he would support unimpeded movement of accredited and non-accredited journalists to report not just on the games but on China," according to Watts.

Jowell told a meeting at the Foreign Correspondents Club in Shanghai earlier this month that she hoped that "greater media freedom would be one of the lasting legacies of the [2008] Olympics."

"I believe that once we establish freedom in this way, even after the delegates and the athletes have gone home, China won't reverse it and the games will have a lasting legacy of opening China to the world," she said.

Who is Jowell kidding, and who was kidding her? Did she really take Liu at his word?

On the one hand, China says it will relax press freedoms for foreign reporters during the 2008 Olympics, and this communist propaganda ploy gets duly reported by an esteemed British newspaper. Then, on the other hand, a few days later China's media minders say that well, for reasons of national security, foreign media outlets operating inside the communist nation must be reined in.

Which is it to be for the 2008 Olympics, Mr Liu, press freedom or tightened controls? And Ms Jowell, are you so naive as to take a communist dictatorship at its word?

Dan Bloom is a freelance writer in Chiayi.
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