KEY POINTS:
BEIJING - Internet connection is proving to be a major problem at the Beijing Games, despite Olympic organisers promising uncensored access.
Slow connection speed and apparent restricted access to news websites have riled many of the media outlets already in Beijing 12 days out from the opening ceremony.
The Chinese ruling party is widely known to monitor and limit all internet access within China.
However, two years ago BOCOG media services head Li Jingbo promised in the official China Daily newspaper that there would be uncensored access during the Games, which begin on August 8.
Yesterday, some media in the Main Press Centre struggled to view various international news websites, including the BBC's Chinese service and appledaily.com. Japanese reporters said click-through connections would not work.
Connections drop out frequently and several organisations, including the Australian Olympic Committee, say the speed is up to 10 times slower than in Australia. One picture takes at least two minutes to send.
There are concerns that once all 22,000 media members expected at the Games arrive, connections will become even slower.
The director of BOCOG media, Sun Weijia, denied yesterday that access was slow and said reports from other journalists had only been positive.
He said he was confident the service could accommodate the thousands of media expected to flood the Main Press Centre (MPC) during the Games.
"I don't think there's any problems if you want to connect to any media website," he told reporters.
"The information we have received is there is no problem."
Several international news agencies located in a different area of the MPC have been surprised at the satisfactory speed of their connections and say they have no problems sending photographs.
NBC is America's official Olympics broadcaster and is sending the biggest contingent to the games. It paid US$894 million for the exclusive rights to broadcast 3600 hours of coverage.
It has had a relatively hassle-free time in China but a common series of complaints is emerging among those who work for non-rights-owning organisations.
Vital equipment is being delayed at customs. Access to politically sensitive venues like Tiananmen Square is being restricted, despite assurances from the government that such obstructions would be lifted for the Olympics. Even something as simple as parking a satellite broadcast truck on the street is proving almost impossible for many outlets, while in the smaller cities, officials have been actively hostile to journalists.
China has tried to give the impression that it has relaxed many of its despotic media restrictions for the Olympics. It was with great fanfare that a new set of rules for foreign journalists was established more than 18 months ago. The rules sought to lift the requirement for journalists to apply to officialdom when they wanted to travel or set up an interview.
Anthony Kuhn, a veteran reporter on China for America's National Public Radio, said: "I was arrested while reporting a story just weeks after the rules were changed. I was reporting on farmland being taken away by government in Shanxi province and all of a sudden I was detained and told I was trespassing in a military zone, which was not the case."
Kuhn has been arrested on similarly trumped-up charges six or seven times since the rules were supposedly relaxed in December 2007.
"The Chinese Government makes all the right noises and promises to modernise things for foreign media but in practice the new rules are almost unenforceable when you get out in the provinces," he says.
CNN, which boasts one of the longest-standing Western media presences in Beijing, has tried to sidestep many of the problems its competitors face by teaming up with BMC, an arm of the official Beijing TV company. But still, the network has hit serious impediments.
"We faced daunting political and logistic hurdles preparing for the coverage of the Beijing Olympics," says Jaime FlorCruz, CNN's Beijing bureau chief. "We still face frequent push-backs. Some of our requests for interviews and shoots are turned down. Logistics have been difficult too, but after some hiccups they seem to have fallen into place."
Reports also suggest that the government has ramped up visa restrictions and has clamped down on allowances for protests in and around Olympic events after the turmoil that surrounded the Olympic torch relay earlier this year.
"I have spoken to journalists who say they have been denied press credentials to cover the Olympics because they have spoken or written about China's human rights record, and issues like Darfur or Tibet," says Richard Bush, director of the Centre for Northeast Asian Policy Studies and a fellow of the Brookings Institution, a Washington DC think-tank.
Internet censorship has also been addressed, in part, for the duration of the games, as foreigners will be able to access much of what is available to them outside China - but only from their designated internet access points in the various media locations and their hotels.
It must not be forgotten, though, that China invited a media operation of a previously unimagined scale into the country, and is trying to meet its demands. And the regime is trying to balance the needs of journalists with the real threat of a security breach.
The Chinese authorities have repeatedly alleged that extremists from the restive northwestern region of Xinjiang - known as East Turkestan by separatists among the Uighur Muslim population - were targeting the Olympics.
Indeed, a Muslim separatist group has claimed responsibility for a series of fatal explosions in several Chinese cities and has threatened to target the Games. Spokesmen claiming to represent the little-known Turkestan Islamic Party claimed the group used a tractor laden with explosives to target police in the city of Wenzhou on July 17, killing 17 people.
However, Chinese officials dismissed video statements by the spokesmen and claimed the attack took place two months earlier, no police were involved, and that a disgruntled gambler was to blame.
- OBSERVER, AAP
