Free Tibet: China's Olympic Pledge Petition
China's human rights record in Tibet has been very poor since its invasion almost sixty years ago.
Still today, arbitrary arrests and torture are routine as China seeks to silence Tibetans' calls for free speech and the right to practice their culture.
When China was awarded the Olympic Games contract, the International Olympic Committee made certain demands regarding human rights and media freedoms in Tibet, which China has not adhered to.
This petition is designed to call for teh IOC to recognise that the Chinese have refused to keep their word, and to speak up and act against the Olympic hosts.
Please help us focus international pressure on the IOC to use their influence over China in the build-up to the Games to push them to take steps regarding the situation in Tibet as they have promised.
We the undersigned would like to ask the IOC for action on the following:
We strongly urge the IOC to fulfil its pledge that it would ensure that China improved its human rights record in teh run up to the 2008 Beijing Games:
In April 2002 IOC president Rogge said: 'The IOC is a responsible organisation and ... if human rights are not acted upon to our satisfaction then we will act.'
But on April 25th 2007, when pressed on issues of China's stance on human rights in Tibet, the IOC said: 'We are not in a position that we can give instructions to governments as to how they ought to behave.'
*Despite your promise, the staging of the Games in Beijing has not improved human rights in China and Tibet.*Free and unrestricted reporting from China and Tibet was a condition of the Games being awarded to China. Yet foreign journalists now need special permits to go to Tibet and are under surveillance while there.*Without free reporting you are giving China license to hide its systematic human rights abuses in Tibet.
Time is running out for you to act.I demand that the IOC forces China to drop its insistence on special permits to journalists and commit to remove any surveillance of journalists and their interviewees.
