"The next Olympic Games will focus the world’s attention upon China", the host country, "which is backwards in terms of human rights": Grahman Watson, leader of the Liberal Democratic party at the European Parliament, summarises the position of his party in the run-up to today’s debate in Strasbourg about the arrest of the Chinese dissident Hu Jia. The European Parliament intends to send a message to Peking, that it may promote freedom, protect human rights and open up to democracy. Virtually all of the European political leaders admonish the Chinese Government about this issue. The leader of the Environmentalist Party, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, who last year had nominated Hu Jia for the Sakarov Award, explains: "The situation in China is extremely serious, and the States, including the European ones, say nothing, busy as they are doing business with Peking. We will make an appeal to the Olympic athletes, when they are in China, to visit and give their sympathy to the political dissidents who are oppressed by the Communist regime". The Assembly sent a further message about this subject, by dedicating its newsroom to Anna Politkovskaya, the Russian journalist who was murdered in 2006 after denouncing the horrors of the Chechen conflict.
