Word: dissenters
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...case of Wu and Wang reveals the degree to which authorities will go to prevent public dissent during the Olympics. The women will be allowed to serve their sentence outside of an official detention camp, according to Human Rights in China, the New-York based NGO that first publicized the two women's case. But they could be sent to a camp if they don't follow the authorities' instructions. Reeducation-through-labor is a form of detention for up to four years used to punish relatively minor criminal activity like prostitution and religious activity banned by the state, like...
Plenty of similar tales have surfaced in recent weeks of how Chinese expressing even mild dissent have been jailed, intimidated, forced to leave Beijing or barred from coming to the capital for the Games. When the Games were awarded to China in 2001, the International Olympic Committee and some Chinese officials argued that they would act as a force for openness. But both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have published reports in the weeks leading up to the Games arguing persuasively that they've had the opposite effect. The forcible suppression of dissent and the jailing of activists...
...With the economy also showing signs of weakness, there's little doubt that how Beijing handles issues of dissent and social instability in the post-Games period will have a lasting impact on China's future. And though not everyone shares his sunny outlook, Bequelin remains optimistic about China?s nascent civil society, whose development was temporarily put on ice in the lead up to the Games. "It's a battle in which Chinese are trying to get government off their backs," he says. And what's being fought for by people like Zhou is access to information...
...that reformers would truly align themselves with the centrist bloc Qalibaf envisions. "In reality this is a political current constructed by the state in order to present personalities from the conservatives like Qalibaf as reformists," Abtahi says, pointing out that Qalibaf played a prominent role in quelling pro-democracy dissent during Khatami's presidency. And while perhaps not the unreconstructed revolutionary that Iran's hard-liners so admire, Qalibaf is unabashedly loyal to Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei, Iran's ultimate authoritarian decision maker...
That's not to say the government hasn't taken aggressive measures to crack down on domestic dissent. Strict visa policies have kept many activists out of the country, most notably former U.S. Olympic speed skater Joey Cheek, who has worked internationally to stop the bloodshed in Sudan's Darfur region. Among the many interest groups that have criticized Beijing's policies, overseas Tibetan rights activists have been the busiest protest group during the Games. They've held at least five demonstrations in high-profile spots around the city, and each time they have been detained and deported. "What...