The Olympic torch has been dogged by protests this weekend as it has made its way through London and Paris. China’s government has responded predictably, saying that the protests were the work of a ‘few Tibetan separatists’ attempting to ‘sabotage’ the event. Spokespeople for the International Olympic Committee have lined-up with the Chinese government and decried the ‘politicisation’ of sport.

Alex Gilady, a IOC coordination commission member, said:

The important message is to tell our athletes that some people are trying to use them and to ride on their backs for solutions that the world has to find in other places like the United Nations.”

However, a recently produced report by Amnesty International shows that the ones using the Games as a political weapon are the Chinese government. It claims that the Chinese government is launching a systematic campaign to imprison activists ahead of the Games. It cites in particular the cases of Hu Jia and Yang Chunlin. Hu Jia has just recently been jailed for three and a half years for spreading

malicious rumors, libel and instigation in an attempt to subvert the state’s political and socialist systems.”

Jia, co-founder of the the Beijing Aizhixing Institute of Health Education, has been a repeated critic of the Chinese government. In November 2007, he participated via web-cam in a European Union parliamentary hearing in Brussels in which he stated that China had failed to fulfill its promises to improve human rights in the run-up to the Olympics. His trial lasted four hours and his lawyers were given one week to prepare his case. Representatives of foreign governments wishing to attend the trial were, according to diplomatic sources:

told that all seats had been ‘allocated’ and there was no space. On 18 March 2008, the same morning of the trial, they were given the contradictory information that seats had been ‘allocated’ to those that had arrived earlier the same day.”

Yang Chunlin who was detained by police on 6 July 2007 launched a petition under the slogan ‘We want human rights, not the Olympics’. Reports have claimed that he was tortured:

For six days in early August and one day in September 2007, his arms and legs were reportedly stretched and chained to the four corners of an iron bed so that he could not move. He was forced to eat, drink and defecate in that position. He was also reportedly forced to watch other detainees being subjected to similar treatment and to clean up their defecation.”

Claims of torture and abuse of activists riddle the report. Some are arrested tried and convicted of subversion like Jia and others are arrested and charged on spurious grounds. This is true in the case of Chen Guangcheng who is currently serving a four-year-and-three month sentence for ‘damaging property and blocking the traffic’ in Linyi city. No penalty points or license shredding, over four years in jail and do not pass go. Guangcheng campaigned against the authorities in Linyi “forced abortions and sterilizations which affected thousands of local women.”