(Independent Chinese PEN Center, 22 October 2008) This PEN Center (ICPC) expresses its cheerfulness to have seen the Regulations of the People’s Republic of China on the Reporting Activities of Permanent Offices of Foreign News Agencies and Foreign Journalists issued by China’s State Council 5 days ago, thus putting an end to the Administrative Regulations Governing Foreign Journalists and Permanent Offices of Foreign News Agencies being valid for nearly 19 years, and making formal and permanent the temporary policies in the Regulations on Reporting Activities in China by Foreign Journalists during the Beijing Olympic Games and the Preparatory Period due to expire on the same day. However, ICPC also disappointedly points out that the new regulations still follow Beijing’s long-standing practice of double standards in human rights for media control “tighten inwardly and loosen outwardly”. In the discrimination against Chinese journalists and citizens, they are not only come down in one continuous line with the old regulations in more violations of press freedom norm and the temporary ones that were relatively relax, but also their inward discrimination become more obvious with increasing their differences, thus still as always being “One Word, One Shame” to Chinese people. Therefore, ICPC appeals that Chinese government must abandon such a discrimination policy against its own citizens and formulate as soon as possible the corresponding regulations to protect the basic rights of Chinese journalists equally without discrimination in accordance to the universal standard of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which China is a signatory, and the the principle of basic human rights to freedom of expression guaranteed in China’s Constitution.

Beijing Olympic Games had an official slogan “One World, One Dream”, very pleasant to listen to but proven being only empty word to cheat the world since Chinese authority has never dreamed the one and same dream, as the common people in China and worldwide have, to honor its commitment to the improvement of human rights in China in general and the openness of press freedom in particular. The temporary regulations guaranteeing the rights of foreign journalists may perhaps have accorded with the dream dreamed by some of them but had been a more evident irony to the equity in Olympic spirits as they indicated the discrimination against domestic journalists, especially compared to the reality of control and suppression to which Chinese media and people were subjected also in terms of “Faster, Farther and Stronger”. It has reminded us that Nazi Germany had distinguished foreign from domestic policy of infamous Rascal Discrimination when it had hosted Berlin Games in 1936, just as the media effect of Olympic Torch relay this year could not but a reminder of its origin created as a means to promote Nazi ideology then, everywhere reflecting “One Word, One Shame”.

In the word of Olympics, Beijing created the records by spending more than 40 billions US dollars on, and by attracting more than 60 state and government heads to have attended, the most sumptuously politicized Games in history, but also by removing millions of ordinary citizens out of Beijing and other cities where the Torch would arrive and where some competitions would take place, by prohibiting many domestic visitors, particularly dissidents and petitioners, from visiting there, and by denying many overseas tourists the visa or entry to China, including Hong Kong where the policy of “One State and Two Systems” has been supposedly guaranteed, and by increasing the number of imprisoned writers and other prisoners of conscience. In the word of Olympics, Beijing announced that three parks would be open for the public demonstration during the Games but approved none of 77 applications, and even detained some of the applicants, including two woman petitioners, respectively aged 77 and 79, for a sentence to Reeducation Through Labor (though the sentence have been canceled after the condemnations voiced internationally and domestically), which has made a typical example of how a dream of Beijing Olympics has become a nightmare to ordinary Chinese people. In the word of Olympics, the information on Sanlu Toxic Milk Powders was sealed for at least a month, resulting in that the news of rescuing tens of thousands of sick infants became the largest scandal after the wake from Olympic dream…...

“Beijing Games has become a Political Olympics, a Money Olympics, and particularly a Terror Olympics!” as commented by Dr. Liu Xiaobo, the Beijing-based former President and current Board Member of ICPC.

Five days ago when the temporary regulations for foreign journalists was due to expire, PEN American Center, PEN Canada and ICPC released a report, Beyond the Olympics: The Freedom to Write in China, highlighting the vulnerable position writers and journalists in China have had, specifically the high price PEN members in China have paid over the past year for their activism, and concluding that “our colleagues, and China’ s citizens as a whole, have yet to see evidence of the human rights improvements their government pledged in order to secure the Olympic Games”. The report calls on the Chinese government to:

1) Extend and make permanent the temporary press regulations established for the Olympic Games and include domestic journalists within these guarantees;

2) Release all writers and journalists currently imprisoned and stop detaining, harassing, and censoring writers and journalists;

3) End Internet censorship, and reform laws used to imprison writers and journalists and suppress freedom of expression.

ICPC is cheerful to have leant that China’s State Council issued the new regulations 15 minuets before the expiry of the temporary ones, thus having realized the first half of Item 1 as given above, but disappointed at its lack of realization of the second half as a necessary condition of press freedom in China, thus continuously extending the inward discrimination with its double standards. Therefore, ICPC explicitly call again on Chinese government to include domestic journalists within the guarantees of the new regulations to abandon such a discrimination policy against its own citizens as soon as possible.

PEN American Center, PEN Canada, and the Independent Chinese PEN Center are among the 145 worldwide centers of International PEN, an organization that works to promote friendship and intellectual cooperation among writers everywhere, to fight for freedom of expression, and represent the conscience of world literature. For the “Beyond the Olympics” report and more information on PEN’s efforts to free writers imprisoned in China, please visit http://www.pen.org/china2008, http://www.pencanada.ca, and http://www.chinesepen.org.