CHINA'S vow to open itself to the world through the Olympic Games was in tatters last night.

It limited access to websites and implemented a plan to spy on the web usage of hotel guests — prompting an apology from the International Olympic Committee.


The International Olympic Committee is looking into reports of internet censorship for journalists covering the Olympics.

Senior IOC member Kevan Gosper apologised to the world's media for misleading them about access to the internet.

Mr Gosper revealed that "some IOC officials had negotiated with the Chinese to have some sensitive sites blocked". Mr Gosper said he had been unaware of the deal while telling the world's media for months they would have unfettered freedom to report while in China.

IOC president Jacques Rogge was flying from Europe to Beijing overnight and will land in the midst of the political furore.

IOC members, including Mr Gosper, who is chairman of the press commission, were meeting overnight with Beijing organisers. "I am in discussions … that will go through the night," Mr Gosper told The Age.

Yesterday in Beijing Age journalists were unable to access so-called "sensitive sites" on human rights, Tibet and the Falun Gong. But sites such as the New York Times, the BBC Chinese site, Radio Free Asia, al-Jazeera and Taiwanese papers were blocked. Even google.com was occasionally blocked.

The blocking was confirmed by Beijing Organising Committee spokesman Sun Weide.

"Our promise was that journalists would be able to use the internet for their work during the Olympic Games," said Mr Sun. "So we have given them sufficient access to do that." The censorship and the monitoring of visitors' web usage breaks promises for complete media freedom made by Chinese authorities when they won the Games in 2001 and repeated ever since.

Australian Olympic Committee president John Coates said he was surprised and shocked that China would implement such censorship. "It is important to have freedom of the press and full transparency during the Games time … but what the IOC can do about it, I don't know," he said.

On Tuesday journalists in Beijing could not access the latest report on human rights in China issued by Amnesty International. The report found China had not kept its vow to improve human rights before the Olympics. It focused on the treatment of activists, detention without trial, censorship and the death penalty, which applies to 68 crimes.

Yesterday, coincidentally, was Amnesty Australia's "internet censorship day of protest".

Amnesty International East Asia researcher Mark Allison said it was worrying that websites were being blocked. "We're urging the IOC to raise this in the strongest terms with the Chinese authorities," he said.

Amnesty International Australia's campaigner on China, Sophie Peer, said: "If the Olympic media village itself doesn't have access, imagine what's going on for Chinese users."

A Chinese activist group, Human Rights in China, claimed yesterday that a teacher who posted pictures online of schools that collapsed killing students in the Sichuan earthquake in May has been sent to a labour camp for one year. The group said Liu Shaokun had been ordered to serve a year of "re-education through labour" — a system that sidesteps the need for a criminal trial or a formal charge.

Chinese authorities have also demanded that Beijing hotels, under the threat of severe penalties, install spyware on hotel guest communications. It means all internet and communications activities of the anticipated 10,000 accredited media, another 5000 unaccredited media, as well as international visitors, will be intently monitored by the Chinese Public Security Bureau.

A United States Senator, Sam Brownback, revealed yesterday that international hotels had contacted him concerned about being forced to install the spy system.

"The Chinese Government has put in place a system to spy on and gather information about every guest at hotels where Olympic visitors are staying. This means journalists, athletes' families and other visitors will be subjected to invasive intelligence gathering by the Chinese Public Security Bureau."

However, some websites that once were banned, such as YouTube, are now accessible. Amnesty is monitoring such websites to see whether they remain open after the Games.

Beijing has a vast bureaucracy of censors and technicians who filter the internet, in what is known as the Great Firewall of China

I've been thinking about boycotting the Olympics this time. Holding them in Beijing was a terrible idea to begin with.

Fuck it.

The winter olympics are better anyways.