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Hong Kong's Emily Lau calls on China to honor promises

A prominent Hong Kong legislator yesterday called on China to honor its promise to improve human rights and develop democracy in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics. In Romania, International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge said China’s relative openness to the outside world after last month’s devastating earthquake was “an indirect result of the Olympic Games.”<

Pro-democracy legislator Emily Lau (劉慧卿) said China had failed to live up to the promises it made when it was awarded the Olympic Games in 2001 and said human rights had in fact worsened.

In an address on government-run radio station RTHK, she called on the public to use Wednesday’s candlelight vigil in Hong Kong — marking the 19th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre — to show their support for a free and democratic China.

“When the Chinese government made a bid to host the Olympics in 2001, it gave an undertaking that it would enhance human rights and develop democracy,” Lau said.

Lau said that “repression of minority groups, including Tibetans, continues. Furthermore, torture of detainees and prisoners remains prevalent. Millions of people have no access to justice and are forced to seek redress through an ineffective extra-legal petition system.”

Tens of thousands of people are expected to take part in the candlelight vigil in Hong Kong’s Victoria Park on Wednesday, the only place on Chinese soil where the 1989 massacre is publicly commemorated.

About 600 people marched silently yesterday through Hong Kong to mark the anniversary. The marchers carried banners that remembered the victims of the Sichuan quake and of the 1989 military crackdown, which killed at least hundreds of people.

The marchers, wearing black T-shirts, observed a brief moment of silence for the quake victims before setting off. Organizers said they would donate funds raised during the march to quake relief efforts.

Veteran activist Szeto Wah said corruption and abuse of power played a role in both the earthquake disaster and the Tiananmen crackdown, noting allegations that shoddy construction had caused many buildings in Sichuan to crumble easily.

Meanwhile, Rogge, in Bucharest, said China’s relative openness since the quake showed that the coming Olympics had had a positive effect.

Rogge predicted that the Olympics in August could help bring more such openness and future democratic reforms.

“You will see that the Olympic Games will change China,” he said in an interview broadcast late on Saturday on Romanian national television station TVR1.

He said that the Olympics could contribute to change in China because reporters would attend and report freely.

“This is something revolutionary for China,” he said.

Asked about a ban on participants expressing their views on China he said “we ask the sportsmen not to make propaganda statements on the stadiums or on the podium.”

This does not prevent them expressing their political views elsewhere, he said, adding that “if we allow any athlete to make political demonstrations on the stadium, the spirit of the Olympic Games will be lost.”

Also See: Activists call on China to respect Olympic vow
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