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Chinese media laud Games, groups see creeping repression

China’s state press gushed over Beijing’s hosting of the Olympic Games yesterday, calling it a watershed event that should make the world look on China with newfound respect.

“Through the Beijing Games’ flawless organization, brilliant sporting performances and friendly atmosphere, an image of an entirely new great country appeared before the world,” the popular Beijing Youth Daily said.

“Even though the Beijing Games have ended, China’s opening up and exchanges with the world will not cease and the Chinese people’s participation in the development and improvement of mankind will not change,” it said.

The English-language China Daily said the Games marked the pinnacle of China’s gradual re-engagement with the world that began 30 years ago under former leader Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平).

“The Games was a historic climax of three decades of China opening to the world. It was also a moment for the world to take a new look at China,” it said.

Meanwhile, the Hong Kong-based Human Rights in China (HRIC) said yesterday China had failed to win any medals in the human rights department during the Beijing Olympics, adding that the Chinese government had “blatantly and successfully” used the Games to realize its political goals.

“Yet the carefully orchestrated facade could not conceal a police state that tramples on human rights,” HRIC executive director Sharon Hom said.

UIGHURS

Uighur activists said yesterday that Chinese security forces had detained 500 members of the ethnic Uighur minority in the Xinjiang region over the past two weeks.

More than 100 people were arrested in the desert town of Kashgar alone, the exiled Uyghur World Congress said.

Families of arrested individuals were not informed about their relatives’ whereabouts, the congress said. “Vanishing” people were nothing unusual in Uighur territories, however, as arbitrary arrests by the Chinese army, police and intelligence services are common.

DEPORTED

A British woman and a German man who took part in a protest during the Olympic Games were deported yesterday, officials said, hours after eight American activists were sent home during the closing ceremony.

Mandie McKeown and Florien Norbu Gyanatshang were put on flights to Frankfurt in the morning, said officials from the British embassy in Beijing and the Foreign Ministry in Berlin.

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