Chinese Dissidents Join Foreign Appeals for Beijing to Honor Rights Commitments
The Washington Post reports that a day after a small group of foreigners challenged Beijing to honor its Olympic commitments, a group of prominent Chinese dissidents and intellectuals also called on the government to honor its human rights commitments.
The open letter posted Tuesday on the Internet represented a different — and perhaps more difficult — challenge for Beijing. Signed by 40 Chinese men and women widely known for scholarly work or anti-government agitation, the appeal seemed harder to dismiss than complaints lodged by foreign groups.
The Chinese government has violated promises it made to secure the Olympic Games, the letter said, by jailing dissidents, pushing poor people from their homes to build stadiums and keeping censorship in place for Chinese journalists and artists.
The Chinese government has warned that attempts to politicize next year’s games will fail. Of course, using the Chinese capital as Olympic venue in order to show off the success of Communist Party rule is also a kind of political grandstanding.
Read the Post article Before Olympics, a Call for Change.
Sphere: Related Content