IOC "surprised" by Games web censorship

"This blatant media censorship adds one more broken promise that undermines the claim that the Games would help improve human rights in China," Amnesty East Asia researcher Mark Allison said.

Czech ex-president Vaclav Havel and Nobel Peace Prize winner Bishop Desmond Tutu and other campaigners urged athletes to speak up on human rights in China during the Beijing Games.

"We are concerned that the Beijing Olympics might simply become a giant spectacle to distract the attention of the international public from the violations of human and civil rights in China," stated the letter signed by 17 politicians and rights activists and issued in Prague.

BOCOG spokesman Sun Weide said censorship would not prevent journalists from reporting the Games, though he acknowledged there would be no access to some websites. BOCOG consistently assured journalists ahead of the Games that they would have normal access to the Internet.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said his government stood by Olympics reporting rules promising to ease restrictions on foreign journalists.

"Our determination to enforce these regulations is staunch," spokesman Liu Jianchao told a regular news conference. "As for how the International Olympic Committee understands these regulations, that's its own affair."

CEREMONY REHEARSAL

organizers also became involved in another media spat, over a South Korean television station's broadcast of a dress rehearsal for the Olympics opening ceremony, traditionally kept under wraps by Games organizers, that has infuriated Chinese Internet users.

But the network said on Thursday it had taken the footage legitimately.