Darfur Groups Step Up Pressure on Beijing

BEIJING — It's a nightmare scenario for China's leaders: In the run-up to the 2008 Summer Olympics, nations boycott the Games over China's close relationship with Sudan's government, which is blamed for fighting that has killed an estimated 200,000 people in the Darfur region and left nearly 2.5 million homeless.

Human rights organizations and other groups have begun to pressure Beijing by linking the Olympics, which China's leaders consider an important symbol of the nation's reclaimed stature in the world, to the issue.

Beijing is deemed to have considerable power over the government of Sudanese leader Omar al-Bashir because China buys two-thirds of Sudan's oil exports and is one of a few nations that sell weapons and spare parts to the regime.

Earlier this month, 108 U.S. Congressmen sent a letter to Chinese President Hu Jintao, calling on him to work to stop the carnage in Sudan's Darfur region.

"It would be a disaster for China if the Games were to be marred by protests, from concerned individuals and groups, who will undoubtedly link your government to the continued atrocities in Darfur, if there is no significant improvement in the conditions," the letter stated.

There are other potential threats to Beijing's Olympics. Human rights activists want to use the occasion to call for greater democracy in China and denounce media repression and the government's use of the death penalty.

"The Olympics is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to ask China for better respect of fundamental norms and principles, including human rights," said Nicholas Becquelin, a Hong Kong-based researcher for the non-profit group Human Rights Watch. "The Chinese government wants the Olympics to be a perfectly staged and politically sterilized environment."

As a veto-wielding member of the United Nations Security Council, China has helped al-Bashir diplomatically by "weakening almost every Security Council resolution so far on Darfur," said Larry Rosin, senior international coordinator of the Save Darfur Coalition, a group of 170 non-government organizations working to end the fighting in Darfur.

Because of Beijing's close economic ties with Sudan, including forgiving $80 million of Sudanese debts last February, "common sense should indicate that China is a country that should be able to leverage (their relationship) to change Sudan's behavior with regards to Darfur," Rosin said.

The Bush administration supports a new U.N. resolution on Darfur and the imposition of sanctions to force Khartoum to accept United Nations peacekeeping troops.

But Chinese leaders have resisted the pressure.

"We hope that this issue will be resolved properly through dialogue and negotiation," Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said last week. "On the Darfur issue in Sudan, the position of the Chinese government is consistent and well known."

Future efforts to force Beijing to change its policies toward Darfur by calling for protests or a boycott of the Olympics are possible, Rosin said.

Other organizations have also capitalized on the Olympics to pressure Beijing.

A report last month by human rights group Amnesty International argued that despite modest improvements in how China reviews death penalty cases and in restrictions on foreign journalists, the Olympics had acted as a catalyst for repression including "a continued crackdown on human rights defenders, including prominent rights defense lawyers and those attempting to report on human rights violations."

To host the Olympics, Beijing promised to improve human rights and to remove restrictions for journalists covering the Games.

"Amnesty International strongly believes that the Olympics is an opportunity (to pressure Beijing) that should not be missed," said T. Kumar, advocacy director for Asia and the Pacific for Amnesty International.

At least in the case of China's policies toward Sudan, using the Olympics to pressure Beijing has begun to have some effect.

Earlier this month, China appointed a special envoy to study the Darfur issue.

Since the situation in Darfur has drawn significant attention from the international community, the special representative will focus on this issue," Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Jiang Yu said at a press briefing.

The news came two days after Beijing pledged to send 275 military engineers to help strengthen 7,000 African Union forces already working in Darfur to slow the bloodletting.

But the shift may turn out to be more a public relations front than a true policy change, said Save Darfur Coalition coordinator Rosin.

"I hope the appointment of the envoy is a signification of seriousness. But if the envoy works within the traditional Chinese context of non-interference in internal affairs (of other nations), then he's going to be giving an ambiguous-at-best message," Rosin said.

Experts expressed concern that China has been quietly lobbying American leaders and lawmakers to tone down the rhetoric on China's ties to Sudan.

In recent weeks, high-ranking Chinese Embassy officials in Washington have invited activists and lawmakers to meetings to explain steps China has taken to end the conflict in Darfur, The Hill, a newspaper covering Congress, reported this month.

Beijing was angered by a recent Amnesty International report that said China and Russia sold weapons to Sudan in violation of a U.N. arms embargo.

Jiang, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, declined to respond directly to questions about the Amnesty charge but said that China's arms sales to Sudan include only conventional weapons, are strictly controlled and do not violate U.N. laws.

Russia acknowledged arms sales to Sudan but denied that the weapons were used in Darfur.

Giselle Davies, chief spokesperson for the International Olympic Committee, said that past Olympic Games had "left a positive impact (on the host nations) in a wider social and economic context."

"The bottom line is that the Olympic Games shine a spotlight of world attention on one city and the host nation for years in the run-up and then during the Games," she said. "The impact doesn't stop on the day the Games end. It has a ripple effect that continues for years onward."