The much-touted Beijing Olympics more and more seem like an awful nightmare amidst the continuing Human rights fallout. This is the first of three articles examining China’s Human Rights Record.

Visit Beijing—What do you see?
Skyscrapers
Fashion (America’s Next Top Model filmed their last season there)
Entrepreneurs
Money, Money, MONEY!!!

Stand in the middle of the city and you could be in New York, Tokyo, Berlin, or Sydney.

This is not your parent’s China…or is it?

Your parent’s China was ruled by the infamous Mao Zedong, Chairman of the Communist People’s Party. As you probably remember from your Cold War history, Mao’s China, like Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia, flagrantly violated human rights.

Chairman Mao’s death in 1976 ushered in a slow yet steady drive towards economic reform that many hoped would correspond to political reform as well.

Events on June 4, 1989 shattered such hopes.

Between April and June 1989, Chinese students, labor activists, and intellectuals carried out numerous demonstrations in protest of the corruption of the Chinese Communist Party and in support of democratic reform. For seven weeks, in Beijing, students occupied Tiananmen Square, refusing to move until the government agreed to democratic reforms. Suddenly, without warning, on June 4th Chinese army tanks rolled into and began firing on the unarmed students, killing hundreds and wounding thousands.

Nineteen years later, the Chinese government will not acknowledge those killed during the massacre, and the human rights violations have only continued.

According to Human Rights Watch, as many as 10,000 executions are carried out in China each year. Sixty-eight crimes, including tax evasion and embezzlement, are punishable by death.

The 2001 US State Report on China includes the following event:

“According to press reports a 38-year-old handicapped factory worker from Shuangcheng, in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang, was dragged from his home and died in custody after being beaten by police. His family allegedly was not allowed to view the body or have an autopsy performed. The location of his remains is unknown”

The report also states that,

“Abuses included instances of extrajudicial killings, torture and mistreatment of prisoners, forced confessions, arbitrary arrest and detention, lengthy incommunicado detention, and denial of due process.”

Ironically, on July 14, 2001, the same year as that report, Beijing won the bid for the 2008 Olympic Games in a “landslide victory”.

If China were judged on the same scale as Cuba, Syria, and Iran, China would be internationally shunned. Thanks to China’s millions of consumers and cheap labor markets, however, the country gets a comparatively free pass from the international community.

Freedom House, a Non-governmental organization based in Washington, DC scores countries according to their political rights and civil liberties each year, a 7 is a totalitarian regime, while a 1 is a total democracy, as such they are excellent tools within comparative politics.

The recently published 2008 Freedom in the World analysis, gives China a 7 for Political rights (PR) and a 6 for Civil Liberties (CL) —a score that is most likely influenced by the tepid economic liberties available to some citizens.

Comparatively, Cuba, Burma (Myanmar) and North Korea, have similar scores, ranking at 7 PR and 7 CL. Saudi Arabia, a country in which women are not allowed to drive and lashings are common, is ranked like China at 7 PR and 6 CL.

Other interestingly lower scores include, Pakistan—recently in the news for the extensive rioting and trouncing of political rights—at 6 PR and 5 CL, while Iran, part of the “axis of evil” is at 6 PR and 6 CL.

Can you imagine the 2008 Olympics being held in any of these countries?

I sure can’t!

So why should China suddenly get this free pass? Perhaps the Olympic Committee thought that the country could change…

Stay tuned—in my next article, I’ll examine the current human rights conditions within China leading up to the 2008 Olympics.