Excerpted from The New Republic:

From the moment the Games were awarded to Beijing in July 2001, human rights advocates, instead of calling for a boycott, began planning to use the event to ramp up pressure on the Chinese government. Human Rights Watch and Human Rights in China set up special websites tracking the Beijing organizing committee's failure to make good its commitments.

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For more information on this issue:

• HRIC Campaign:
  Incorporating Responsibility 2008 Take Action Campaign
• HRIC Press Statement:
  Torch Relay in Tibet: Spectacle over Substance
• HRIC Press Advisory:
  Legal Guidelines for Foreigners—Olympic Traps for Foreigners?
• HRIC Statement:
  Chinese Authorities Abuse Licensing System to Harass Rights Defenders
• HRIC Press Statement:
  Five-Year Sentence of Olympics Critic Not Human Rights Progress
• HRIC Press Advisory:
  Petitioners Face Ongoing Abuse
• China Rights Forum No. 4, 2007:
  The Real Situation in Pre-Olympics China - Teng Biao and Hu Jia give their views about the situation on the ground in the countdown to the Olympics.