Rights groups bemoan lack of Beijing protests

Among the many activists following the games from afar is Wang Dan, a student organizer of the 1989 Tiananmen democracy movement who’s now based in the United States.

“The goal for the Chinese government is to promote nationalism further,” he said in an e-mail. “But ironically, the Olympic Games exposed more social crises than ever, like the Tibet issue, to the Chinese people.”

Press freedom has been a major area of concern. Dozens of politically related Web sites have been blocked at the Olympic press center, and Chinese authorities have sought to curtail reporting by local and foreign journalists of protests and dissent.

Sharon Hom, executive director of New York-based Human Rights in China — whose Web site has been among those blocked — said foreign journalists looking into human rights problems have faced “intimidation and crude police tactics.”

She also suggested the Olympic press corps has underreported the impact of the surveillance and security infrastructure installed for the games, including collection of data on the many foreign visitors.

Bob Dietz, Asia program coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists, said by telephone from Hong Kong that China has largely succeeded in controlling news coverage during the games.

“In the end, they pretty much defined the terms in which the media was going to operate,” he said. “Those terms are not the same as in the Western world.”

Dietz expressed concern that governments elsewhere, including Russia, would emulate the Chinese, coupling support for a free-market economy with heavy-handed control of the media.

“That approach resonates in a lot of places,” he said.

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