International Olympic Committee Agrees To Internet Censorship During Games

New York Times:

The International Olympic Committee failed to press China to allow fully unfettered access to the Internet for the thousands of journalists arriving here to cover the Olympics, despite promising repeatedly that the foreign news media could "report freely" during the games, Olympics officials acknowledged Wednesday.

Since the Olympic Village press center opened Friday, reporters have been unable to access scores of Web pages -- among them those that discuss Tibetan issues, Taiwanese independence, the violent crackdown of the protests in Tiananmen Square and the Web sites of Amnesty International, the BBC's Chinese language news, Radio Free Asia and several Hong Kong newspapers known for their freewheeling political discourse.

The restrictions, which closely resemble the blocks that China places on the Internet for its own citizens, undermine sweeping claims by Jacques Rogge, the International Olympic Committee president, that China had agreed to provide free Web access for foreign news media during the games. Mr. Rogge has long argued that one of the main benefits of awarding the games to Beijing was that the event would make China more open.

"For the first time, foreign media will be able to report freely and publish their work freely in China. There will be no censorship on the Internet," Mr. Rogge told Agence France-Presse just two weeks ago.

Read the whole story: New York Times

Comments

[JaseAllen]

Wait, what???? The Olympic Committee chose China out of dozens of eligible countries and /it/ had to agree to /China's/ demands??? Even /Bush/ could have negotiated a better deal than that and he bankrupted a freakin' oil company!