Thursday, July 31, 2008

Human Rights Watch Covering the Olympics from China? Need uncensored net access? This new guide from Human Rights Watch explains how.

This question has been asked me more than once lately. Despite clear promises that foreign journalists would have free and uncensored Internet access while in Beijing, the reality is that journalists must pay an awful amount of money for net access here. Worse, they can only get a sanitized Chinese edition -- with blocked sites and filtered content.

The announcement on Wednesday there would be no free access to the Internet was obvious a major embarrassment for both the Beijing Olympic Committee (BOCOG) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC). If there was ever an Olympic promise broken by Beijing, it was here.

The spin doctors at the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, nominally in charge of the foreign journalists, said the censorship was in line with the Chinese law. Nonsense: There is no Chinese law regulating this kind of system. I guess none of the journalists got a copy of that alleged law.

Foreign ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao suggested to BBC News that the blocked sites were to blame: "There are some problems with a lot of sites that makes it not easy to view them in China." (Indeed, a very creative way to describe the censorship.)

Initially the IOC appeared surprised by the censorship announcement, but according to SCMP.com the IOC later admitted it knew in advance BOCOG had broken its promise.

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What's really going on here? Although the Beijing organizers are acting as if they were in charge of this decision, in fact it was mostly out of their hands. During the torch relay, BOCOG needed permissions from hundreds of local governments to allow TV crews to film. This explains why that operation was a logistical nightmare -- not only for foreign TV stations, but also BOCOG itself.

Also, security forces have their own mandate -- and indeed "Internet censorship" is not part of BOCOG's job description.

BOCOG was probably sincere when it promised IOC that it would give uncensored net access to foreign journalists. The catch is, they didn't have the power to grant that access. Still BOCOG probably assumed they had enough leverage to sway China's Internet censors. Obvious, they were wrong about that. BOCOG's inability to call the shots is far more embarrassing within China's own bureaucracy than to the approximately 20,000 angry journalists in (or about to arrive in) Beijing. The big blow to BOCOG is its internal loss of face.

How can foreign journalists in Beijing get the latest information on Amnesty International and the Falun Gong? Just use the same systems as Chinese net users to circumvent government filters. A virtual private network (VPN) costs about $40 USD. Today, Lost Laowai explains how to set up a VPN in China. And Danwei published an entertaining guide to forbidden cliches for visiting journalists.

Finally, fellow Tidbits contributor Kim Pearson notes: "Today Human Rights Watch has published its Reporter's Guide to Covering the Beijing Olympics, available both in paperback form or as a collection of pdf files that can be downloaded from the Web. According to the introduction, the guide explains both the rights and risks that journalists and their Chinese contacts face. It also offers safety tips as well as advice on what to do if you are detained."

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