Amnesty: China Broke Promises of Free Speech

Ten days ahead of the Beijing Olympics’ opening ceremony, Amnesty International charged that China hasn’t welched on promises of freedom for activists and journalists it made when it was awarded the Games. “The Chinese authorities are tarnishing the legacy of the Games,” said a rep who called for the release of “imprisoned peaceful activists” and a path to ending the death penalty, Bloomberg reports.

China’s Olympic bid committee said in 2001 that it would “give the media complete freedom to report”—but the country has jailed people it sees as a risk to an image of “stability,” the human rights group says. A foreign reporters’ group found 260 instances of meddling since early 2007, and Amnesty expressed “surprise” at the International Olympic Committee’s “confidence that foreign media will be able to report freely.” (More China stories.)