Word: hu
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...Lhasa protests it has been equally unready to change its policies on the human rights front, despite knowing almost from the day the Games were awarded to Beijing in 2001 that hosting the Olympics would shine an increasingly bright spotlight on its dismal rights record. On April 3, activist Hu Jia was sentenced to three and a half years' imprisonment after being found guilty of "inciting subversion of state power." Prosecutors had advanced as evidence essays he wrote linking the staging of the Games with human rights, as well as interviews he gave on the issue with foreign reporters...
...Hu's sentence was the latest in a string of recent convictions and imprisoning of activists apparently designed to stifle even the slightest sign of dissent ahead of the Games. Even China's huge online population of some 230 million, which is often cited as the country's most powerful force for greater openness, has felt the heat. Thousands of websites have been shuttered while government controls and blocking of sites outside China has intensified significantly in recent months. As Irene Khan, Secretary General of Amnesty International put it in a report released on April 1, despite promises by both...
...Link points out that leaders such as President Hu Jintao are of a generation that got "Soviet-style educations" in the 1950s. "They don't have the knowledge or imagination to make better decisions," Link says. Leaders operate under a system of collective decision making that constrains the state's ability to be flexible in the face of new challenges. Hu is painfully aware that his political position may well rest on the outcome of moves he ratifies on big issues like Tibet, where he served as Party Secretary during the last flare up of protests in 1989. "Like...
...want to participate in China's Olympics. The Prime Minister of Poland has already indicated he will boycott the opening ceremony because of events in Tibet; French President Nicolas Sarkozy has said he wouldn't rule out a similar move. U.S. President George W. Bush called his Chinese counterpart Hu to urge Beijing to engage the Dalai Lama in a dialogue. Others could seek to distance themselves from the Games, if only as a precaution against "being seen on television dining with Chinese leaders as the dark reality of what's going on trickles out," as Bequelin puts...
...Unfortunately, it looks as though events are about to repeat themselves. As Pierre de Coubertin, creator of the modern Olympics, noted, “Holding an Olympic Games means evoking history.” Will President Hu Jintao refuse to congratulate a gold medalist who happens to be Taiwanese? Will China’s own “undesirables” be conveniently moved out of the television cameras’ sight...