New York Times: China's 'Undesirables'

May 24, 2001

As the International Olympic Committee considers whether to select Beijing as the site of the 2008 Olympic Games, it must retreat from its tired, rather disingenuous excuse that the Olympics are about sport, not politics.

If Beijing is chosen to play host to the Olympics, the decision will be a feather in the cap of the Chinese government. But this decision would also ensure a continued wave of human rights abuses against China's "undesirables" - dissidents, the mentally ill, the homeless, street children and the unemployed.

Every city that vies for the Olympic Games wants to make itself as presentable as possible, both to the International Olympic Committee and to the international audience that attends the competition. Unfortunately, whenever China has prepared for international attention, it has conducted street sweeps by the police to clear "undesirables" from sight. Journalists reported that such sweeps increased in February, when 17 inspectors from the International Olympic Committee visited Beijing.

What happens to those taken into custody? Some are taken to psychiatric hospitals run by the police, which are flourishing these days because of a crackdown on the Falun Gong. Journalists and human rights groups have documented that these hospitals torture prisoners with drugs and electrically charged acupuncture.

China also sends prisoners to custody and repatriation camps; there are 700 to 800 camps in China. More than two million citizens - mostly small business owners, dissidents and the poor - now languish in them. Up to 20 percent of the inhabitants are street children under 16. No one in these camps is charged with any specific crime, or brought before a judge, or represented by counsel.

Stays in these camps can last from days to months, and conditions are horrific. Water is filthy. Sanitation and medical care are completely inadequate. Beatings and sexual abuse are routine.

Finally, if the Olympics comes to China, the crackdown on dissidents is likely to continue or get even worse. Ding Zilin, a professor at People's University in Beijing, founded Tiananmen Mothers after her son was killed during the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations. Because she has called upon the authorities to account fully for the killings of unarmed demonstrators, she has lost her job, and so has her husband. They are under virtual house arrest; visitors from the outside are not permitted.

China should be considered for the Olympics, but only if it commits to ending the abuses. If the I.O.C. chooses China without addressing these human rights violations, it will be condoning not only the abuses of the past, but the future incarceration or torture of thousands of Chinese citizens.