China’s unblocking of Reporters Without Borders’ Web site there i...

now is available at the Beijing Olympic press center, “other parts of the capital and in Shanghai,” the group said. Its tests show that other human rights and foreign news sites also have been unblocked. The International Olympic Committee and Chinese government have faced stinging criticism, including in a resolution adopted by the U.S. House, since the IOC admitted that it cooperated with China to keep some sites blocked for reporters at the Games, contrary to promises (WID Aug 1 p6). “This partial lifting of censorship shows that the Chinese government is not completely insensitive to pressure,” said Reporters Without Borders. Pressure should have started in 2001, when China landed the 2008 games, it said. Other sites newly available to reporters at the games include those of Amnesty International, which recently reported that China hadn’t lived up to human-rights promises as the games near. Others are the Human Rights Watch and the BBC English- and Chinese-language sites. Sites still blocked include Reporters Without Borders’ Chinese-language site, the Chinese Human Right Defenders site and the site of the Tor Project, which offers so-called onion routing to get around firewalls, as well as sites for Falun Gong, independent Chinese news site Boxun and Tibetan groups. Reporters Without Borders said its virtual protest will let visitors “protest outside a virtual version of Beijing’s Olympic Stadium, waving a placard with the slogan of their choice.” It will occur at 11 a.m. GMT at www.rsfbeijing2008.org, an hour before the opening ceremony, in coordination with protests outside China’s embassies in London, Madrid, Berlin, Paris, Washington, Brussels, Montreal, Rome and Stockholm and a rally at the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland.