China: Olympic Sponsors Ignore Human Rights Abuses

The 12 TOP (The Olympic Partner) sponsors of the Beijing Games are Atos Origin, Coca-Cola, General Electric, Manulife, Johnson & Johnson, Kodak, Lenovo, McDonalds, Omega (Swatch Group), Panasonic, Samsung, and Visa. Over the last 12 months, Human Rights Watch repeatedly contacted all TOP sponsors and met with five of these companies, off the record. The other seven failed to respond to repeated requests to meet with Human Rights Watch. In its meetings and correspondence with the 12 TOP sponsors, Human Rights Watch documented numerous human rights violations related to the Beijing Games, including ongoing media censorship, the abuse of migrant construction workers who built the Olympic venues, and the unlawful forced evictions of hundreds of thousands of Chinese citizens from their homes to make way for these venues. Yet the sponsors were unwilling to address these abuses.

The Olympic sponsors claim to be good corporate citizens, said Sophie Richardson, Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. But as they enjoy the Games from the comfort of their seats at the Olympic stadium, they should reflect on their failure to speak up for the Chinese citizens who built the stadium and their hotels, clean their hotel rooms, serve their meals or, in the case of Chinese journalists, try to bring them their news.

One corporate executive told Human Rights Watch, It is not our comfort zone to criticize countries. Another said: That is the role of human rights organizations

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