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Rogge denies striking deal with Beijing on censorship

International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Jacques Rogge said yesterday the IOC did not strike a deal with Chinese authorities to censor Internet access during the Olympic Games.

“The conditions you were working in on Tuesday were not good,” Rogge told reporters, referring to the day when Internet blocks were discovered.

However, Rogge stopped short of offering an apology.

“I am not going to make an apology for something that the IOC is not responsible for. We are not running the Internet in China,” Rogge said.

Meanwhile, IOC press official Kevan Gosper said yesterday the IOC and the Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee (BOCOG) had set up a working group to examine which censored sites could be opened up to reporters.

Gosper described the process as a “work in progress.”

Earlier in the week, Gosper, an IOC member for more than 30 years, said that senior organizers had cut a deal with Chinese authorities to block some Web sites.

IOC spokeswoman Giselle Davies yesterday brushed off criticism that the IOC had backtracked on requiring Beijing not to censor Web access for reporters.

One reporter quoted Rogge as saying “foreign media will be able to report freely and publish their work freely in China. There will be no censorship on the Internet.”

Davies said that Rogge, who is Belgian, may have not been precise when he spoke because he was using English, which is not his native tongue.

“I think we are trying to hang on every single word often spoken by people whose mother tongue isn’t English. Let me be clear again: The IOC would like to see open access for the media to be able to do their job,” Davies said.

Numerous times over the last several years, Chinese officials and high-ranking IOC members said there would be no censorship on the Internet for accredited journalists covering the games.

Chinese authorities have repeatedly said reporting would be “free and unfettered.”

In 2001, when China won the right to host the games, BOCOG Executive Vice President Wang Wei (王偉) was widely quoted as saying: “We will give the media complete freedom to report when they come to China.”
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