China restricts movement prior to Olympics 08

"Reporters Without Borders is alarmed by the
introduction of new rules aimed at reinforcing controls over Chinese "fixers"
working for foreign journalists and over all foreigners visiting China during
the Olympic Games. The organisation also condemns an increase in police controls
of foreign journalists trying to cover protests by parents whose children were
killed when schools collapsed in the Sichuan earthquake".                       Source:  Reporters sans frontières - China
via peter.reardon

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) have characteristically
chosen to ignore the social ramifications of a media 'blackout' of all internal
news at the time of the Olympic Games preferring to keep their collective
fingers crossed that the profits for the event will not in any way be
jeopardized by any incidental social event.

Central authority within the Chinese bureaucracy is restricting
the reporting by journalists on one hand and more shamefully silencing victims
of the recent earthquakes on the other.

Parents, for example,  speaking our against the numbers of schools
which some suggest were built with economy in mind and thus collapsed, killing
many children. Parents naturally want answers.

The government would seem to want to suppress the cries of the
ordinary people who are suffering by restricting foreign and local media access
to the source of their tragedies.

A media presence is not what the government wants although they
would allow rural people the opportunity to express their concern more widely
about possible local authority mismanagement of construction projects: and
others to wonder how safe are the Olympic venues?