- 19 Aug 08, 02:11 PM
The first 11 reports we have produced at these Games on Beijing's Olympic lessons for London have not involved any tussles with the Chinese authorities. Our luck seems to be running out now.
The police were not happy with us filming near Tiananmen Square the night of the opening ceremony after they had blocked off all the streets. But an officer let us do our job for five minutes and then moved us on.
And, the other day, we were talking to dozens of Chinese people in the middle of a packed street with a camera and nobody asked us to leave. That was interesting because the authorities don't usually like western reporters asking Chinese people questions in public places.
But we have had problems with our latest story.
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We had planned to interview a 66-year-old man who has been living in a tent for the last two years because he refuses to move from the rubble of his house in a poor district of Beijing.
The Chinese have given many of Beijing's scruffy districts a makeover for the Games and his home has been destroyed to make way for new buildings. But he was making a protest because he says he did not get enough compensation and says he was asked to move a long way away.
On the way to the interview, however, he called us to say a policeman had come to his home and ordered him not to talk to us or any foreign journalists during the Olympics.
Two days later when we tried to arrange a meeting on neutral territory he rang to say he was under house arrest.
Interestingly, the police must have known we were on the way to the interview because they took their action so swiftly.
The Geneva-based Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions estimates that 1.5 million people have been moved to make way for Olympic projects and the massive makeover Beijing has had for the Games. The Chinese government denies this.
Britain has also needed compulsory purchase orders and have relocated people and businesses to clear the Olympic Park in Stratford for construction. It wasn't an easy process for everybody.
London had a very similar case when another pensioner stood his ground and refused to leave the home his family had lived in for many years in the middle of the Park - even when there was no telephone connection or electricity.
He was not stopped from telling his story to the media, however.
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Comments
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Whatever happenned to all the media hoo haa about the pollution. You lot seem to love getting carried away issues before any games but as soon as they start you completly forget about them. It was the same in Athens about things not being finished on time.
In the lead-up to London it will be about over spending on budgets, not enough funding for our athletes, how unpredictable the British climate is. Come the opening day all the negative press used to fill the papers will just dissapear.
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Think didigermany is wrong. Yes, Ohurugu missed drug tests and faced all manner of obstacles as a result. But she will have been heavily tested since then. It's not correct to say she hasn't been tested in the last 8 months. And she's not the only one with a 'drugs testing cloud' hanging over her - athletes found to have doped in the past and served their bans have been allowed back and are competing in these Games. The rules say this is ok. Whether or not we all think that is right is another thing, of course.
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Then why was Dwain Chambers not allowed to compete? Didn't he also complete his ban? Why did he have to go through to the high court to get past the BOC? Seems like double standard once again.
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Chambers had served his ban, yes. However he did actually admit that he had done drugs and the tests showed that. Ohurugu never actually tested positive but did miss three tests. She appealed the BOC ban and they let her back. Chambers appealed and was refused. It's appalling the way in which the BOC treated the two people differently. If you are going to stop him competing after he served his two year ban then why didn't they just give Chambers a lifetime ban straight up.
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That's right, the big difference between Chambers and Uhurougu is that one admitted doing drugs (ie he cheated) and the other just missed three (yes, three) tests (ie she broke the rules about being available for testing).
Frankly, once you'd missed two you'd be pretty paranoid about making sure you didn't miss a third but, hey ho, she did miss another and, as a result, got a ban.
I don't actually know whether Chambers should have been let back in, but other dopers from other countries have been after serving a ban so it does raise a question about why the UK's standards are apparently different.
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Here's an extract from the BBC news website last year:
Woodward Olympics role questioned
Woodward's arrival was not greeted by all in British Olympic sport
Sir Clive Woodward's role as the British Olympic Association's elite performance director has been queried before a parliamentary committee.
Olympic cycling gold medallist Chris Boardman told MPs: "We don't see anything he has to offer cycling that we are not already getting."
UK Athletics chief Ed Warner said: "He has not had any impact in athletics yet and he is a political hot potato.
"We must let sports run themselves and are determined not to be dictated to."
He added: "Ultimately, it has to be about what the performance director of each sport believes in and they must stand and fall by that."
Woodward, who led England to Rugby World Cup success in 2003, is 14 months into his job at the BOA.
We have a thin layer of athletic talent - it doesn't go very deep
UK Athletics chief Ed Warner
His mission is to come up with ways to help Team GB finish at least fourth in the medal table at the 2012 Games in London.
The BOA's recruitment of Woodward has attracted controversy as his role was seen by some to be duplicating work already done by UK Sport, the government-backed body which funds elite sport to the tune of more than £100m a year.
I onder if his role is still being questioned and what contribution Sir Clive has made. Whatever he's done, it seems to have made a difference
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RE: Chambers/Ohurugu drug tests.
I was reading an article about Peter Cousins, British Olympic Judo competitor, today. He had the same thing battle as Ohurugu. Its important to clear up that, just because an athlete misses a drugs test doesn't necessarily equate to the athlete being unwilling to be tested, or guilty of any wrong doing. From what i understood, it was the inflexible testing system which created problems, where literally athletes could miss a drugs test by minutes [because of a limited 60 minute time frame to be tested in].
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Dear Adrian,
It's not your luck, or the BBC's luck, that is running out; it is a failure of the world's most reknowned and respected media to put pertinent questions to the IOC.
Well done Christine, the Chinese friends I was with enjoyed the run enormously. Thought you had lost it seconds before the end, so made it more thrilling when you came through. Boosted athletics interest in China by at least 2%; and that is a lot of people.
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Why is this message on the sport page? Shouldn't the rightful place be in the political section if the BBC really think it is news worthy.
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"London had a very similar case when another pensioner stood his ground and refused to leave the home his family had lived in for many years in the middle of the Park - even when there was no telephone connection or electricity.
He was not stopped from telling his story to the media, however."
To be fair, unlike the British media, there is no Chinese media digging hard for the stories in Britain, either. This different view may not only ideological, but also cultural.
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Being able to film in front of Tienanmen Square for five minutes is a pretty drastic improvement than the situation a couple of years back. But amongst the local authorities, there is still a general suspicion of foreign reporters; there has been a lot of unfair media hype negatively portraying China in the past several months (and arguably also for the past several years....three of my U.S. friends can only associate phrases/words like 'one-child policy', 'communist regime', 'human rights violation', 'pollution', 'Tibet oppression' when China is mentioned....all which are happening in the country, but it still is an unbalanced view.)
China and media-rights still have a long way to go before it bears any semblance to how the media operates in the west (which also isn't without its flaws, but deals better with free speech.)
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Why are you so absorbed in the dark side of China? I've never read anything positive about China on this website.
I am a Chinese, and the Olympic game is really a great thing for us. We really have done our best. If you are still not satisfied, we have nothing to say.
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Where is my post?
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Is it called censorship? If I criticise the British and don't have the same view, my words would disappear.
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It's always amusing to see how hypersensitive Chinese are to even the slightest hint of criticism, deserved or otherwise. Despite opening up somewhat to the outside world for these Olympics, many there (or from there) still don't seem to have caught on to the fact that it's common practice elsewhere to be critical of governments and societies in general and needn't be a cause for reflexive defensiveness. China, at least from the outside, appears to have done a great job staging these Games but it doesn't preclude other valid questions about the society. Hopefully, Chinese and other national journalists and spectators will apply the same critical scrutiny to British society in four years time. In politics, as in sport, turnabout is fair play.
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Joyfulxinxin, mounchacha and others seem concerned about these stories being attached to the Olympics. There is a long tradition of human interest stories being run beside major international events, not to detract from the sporting action, but to fill -in the background.
I was fortunate to visit China two years ago, and was delighted to see that people had arguments in the street, parking disputes and noisy teenagers, especially in Shanghai, but just as evident elsewhere. We talk about these things to show the richness and diversity of a culture, not to criticise that culture but to educate our own.
The politics of the PRC is radically different from the UK, and shapes society accordingly, but we could say that of every country in the world. Website Readers should look to the wider pages of the BBC and other News sites to see that we are much more critical of our own country, but the key thing is that we are allowed to be critical of our own country. We are also allowed to visit other countries to see how they function. We do not always use these freedoms wisely, but we cherish them, and sympathise with those who don't have the same rights.
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Why do BBC go all the way to Beijing to interview a solatary homeless man, in a population of 1.3 billion, when you can go a few yards outside of your london head office and find homeless people living on the streets in a population of less than 100m?
BBC has it all wrong, since when have you become the worlds unelected spokesperson for human rights and civil liberties instead of performing your real function of reporting real unbiased news?
BBC's bigotry and incessant griping at China is pathetic and I earnestly believe that James Reynolds should find something of real import in the worlds most populous and emergent nation to report about.
BBC is getting so bad I am even considering watching CNN!
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