Rights group accuses China of increasing abuses in run-up to Olympics

BEIJING (AP) - China is failing to live up to its promise that staging the 2008 Olympic Games would bring greater civil liberties, human rights group Amnesty International said in a report issued Tuesday.

Chinese authorities have violated pledges made when bidding for the games by heightening abuse and surveillance of political and religious dissidents, jailing journalists, and closing publications focusing on social development, the group said.

With just one year before the games, time is "running out for the Chinese government to fulfill its promise of promoting human rights as part of the Olympics legacy," Amnesty's secretary-general, Irene Khan, said in a statement. "Unless the Chinese authorities take urgent measures to stop human rights violations over the coming year, they risk tarnishing the image of China and the legacy of the Beijing Olympics."

Amnesty's report comes on the heels of one issued last week by Human Rights Watch, which also said the Chinese government had failed to live up to promises of greater human rights, instead clamping down on domestic activists and journalists.

Amnesty's release came as six activists were detained Tuesday after scaling down a part of the Great Wall with a large banner that read "One World, One Dream, Free Tibet 2008," the London-based Free Tibet Campaign and Students for a Free Tibet said in an e-mail statement.

Activists say China is using the Olympics to underscore its claims on Tibet, which is says it has ruled for centuries. But many Tibetans say their homeland was essentially an independent state for most of that time. Chinese communist troops occupied Tibet in 1951, and Beijing continues to rule the region with a heavy hand.

On Monday, police detained journalists at a rare protest in Beijing staged by a free-press advocacy group that accused the Chinese government of failing to meet pledges for greater media freedom.

The detentions, which came during a visit to Beijing by International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge, followed the unfurling of posters depicting the Olympic rings made from handcuffs by members of Reporters Without Borders on a pedestrian bridge outside the headquarters of the Beijing Olympics planning committee.

The Paris-based group said China continues to restrict press freedoms and lock up journalists, political dissidents and activists who publish on the Internet _ despite pledges to liberalize made when bidding to stage the games.

The Beijing Olympics, which begin Aug. 8, 2008, are a huge source of pride for China. In bidding for the games back in 2001, Chinese leaders promised International Olympic Committee members that the Olympics would lead to an improved climate for human rights and media freedom.