NGOs: China Is Breaking Olympics Promises

NGOs: China Is Breaking Olympics Promises: "In the months preceding the Beijing Olympics, officials from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) assured wary journalists they would have unfettered access to the Internet while reporting the Games. In April, for instance, IOC official Hein Verbruggen, who was head of the inspection team in Beijing this spring, told reporters the Chinese government would not impose Internet censorship on Olympics journalists.

Now, as athletes are arriving and the media center is up and running in Beijing, thousands of journalists are realizing that their fears have been confirmed: Chinese authorities are indeed blocking Web sites of Amnesty International as well as Tibetan and Taiwanese groups. 'The Chinese government won't allow the spread of any information that is forbidden by law or harms national interests on the Internet,' the official Xinhua news agency reported on July 31. 'If a few Web sites are difficult to browse, it's mainly because they have spread content that is banned by the Chinese laws,' Xinhua quoted Sun Weide, the Beijing Olympics spokesman, as saying at a press conference in Beijing's Olympics media center. 'The Internet is regulated according to law in China, just like in other countries.'"

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