Human rights abuse

Friday, Feb. 8, 2008 | 2 a.m.

In a mad rush to spruce up China before the Summer Olympics, officials are hoping a long list of cosmetic fixes will give the world a favorable impression of the young superpower.

Intensely aware of the international scrutiny, Chinese officials have been doing more than making cosmetic fixes. They are trying to cover up the country’s horrific human rights record.

This week the country released Ching Cheong, a Hong Kong-based correspondent for the Straits Times, a Singapore newspaper. Ching was detained in 2005 and spent 16 months waiting before being convicted of espionage, a loosely defined charge in China that authorities use to silence journalists, dissidents and free-speech activists. Said to be in failing health, he was released on what the Chinese government called parole.

Human rights activists were anything but impressed. Ching should have never been detained, much less convicted, and his release was at best a token gesture undercut by the government’s push to silence others before the Olympics. Officials have tightened controls on the Internet and stepped up efforts to sweep dissidents out of the public light.

For example, as Ching was being released, writer and democracy activist Lu Gengsong was being sentenced to four years in prison for “inciting subversion of state power.” A onetime lecturer at a police training academy, Lu became a freelance journalist and landed in trouble after writing about political corruption in local government in the city of Hangzhou.

Another matter of housecleaning was the December arrest of Hu Jia, a prominent human rights and democracy advocate. Hu is being held on subversion charges.

Chinese officials like to portray such arrests as “internal matters,” but nothing could be further from the truth. Instead they are matters of human rights.

If China is really concerned about its image, it needs to release the political prisoners. The international community should demand it.