We all knew China's population was graying rapidly, but Wednesday authorities drove home the point by sentencing two elderly women to the gulag. Wu Dianyuan and Wang Xiuying are both citizens in their late 70's who walk using canes; Wang is partially blind.  They'd applied for permission to protest in one of the three government-designated "protest corners" in  Beijing public parks. Their grievance is a common one: that they received inadequate compensation for their homes which were demolished in a recent pre-Games wave of urban redevelopment. Permission to protest was not granted; none of at least 77 applicants have received permission, in fact. Then the two elderly ladies each received a suspended sentence of one year of "re-education through labor", an extra-judicial punishment that doesn't require the decision of a court judge.

Other Chinese activists have been held incommunicado since the onset of the Games. Dissenters and the lawyers who represent them have been detained, even beaten. The Foreign Correspondents' Club of China reports that, in less than a month, members have encountered reporting interference by authorities on an average of about two cases per day. Meanwhile foreign critics of Beijing's policies in Tibet have been playing a cat-and-mouse game with Beijing police, launching guerrilla protests of various sorts on an almost daily basis—only to be swiftly arrested and deported. (A recent protest near the Bird's Nest stadium, involving activists holding LED lights that spelled out "Free Tibet", lasted just 20 seconds, according to Students for a Free Tibet; the exile group said that on Tuesday half a dozen "citizen journalists, videobloggers, and activists" were detained, including Brian Conley who created the well-known videoblog "Alive in Baghdad".)

For more background on this behind-the-scenes tussle, Newsweek.com interviewed Minky Worden, media director for Human Rights Watch China. Worden recently edited the book "China's Great Leap: The Beijing Games and Olympian Human Rights Challenges".  She talks about the recent failures and hopeful future for human rights reforms and extended press freedoms in China. (The contributor who talked with Worden requested anonymity for fear of retaliation). Excerpts:

In the short term, what do you think the impact of the Olympics has been on human rights?
     This year a chill descended and it started almost exactly with the one-year countdown on August 8, 2007. This was entirely predictable, but it was also against the backdrop of a pretty rough year  -- with the 17th Party Congress in October, the freak snowstorms earlier this year, the Tibet protests, and the Sichuan earthquake.
     It's important to remember that 2008 is not just an Olympic year. It's also the 30th anniversary of Deng Xiaoping's opening and reform policy. In the past ten years, there have been important reforms for the rule of law and human rights. And the Internet means people have a lot more access to information than they had before, even though it's not total access.
     This year, there's been a marked deterioration [in the human rights situation]. But this is a very Darwinistic Communist party: there are elements within that recognize the need to change, not the least to hold on to their own power. We're hopeful that after the Olympics the Chinese government  will move on vital legal reforms, including [changes to] the criminal procedure law, to reeducation through labor, and to due process checks on death sentences that could radically reduce the numbers of executions.

Temporary regulations, due to expire October 17, have allowed foreign journalists to interview anyone they'd like, as long as the
interviewee gives permission. These represent a liberalization compared to the old 90's-era rules. What do you think will happen in the
future?
     Some public officials have publicly mooted that these temporary rules could be extended past October 17. If they were extended and made permanent--as Human Rights Watch and the Committee to Protect Journalists have requested--it would create a two-tier system [with the Chinese press having less freedom that foreign press]. We don't believe that would be sustainable.
     If the rules were extended to Chinese journalists, that could be a dramatic move for human rights in China. If environmental catastrophes and human rights abuses could be covered by Chinese journalists in advance, before they become global crises, that would be much better for the government and the Chinese people. The number-one beneficiary would be the Chinese people.
      But that's still an open question. There are still more journalists and Internet writers jailed in China than in any other country. The Foreign Correspondents Club of China has documented cases of abuses, harassment, and detention almost every day--some of them very serious.
     The hope is that the government will see that 20,000 journalists fanned out over China and there were no lasting bad effects from allowing journalists greater ability to report.

What are some of the cases of jailed activists that you're most concerned about?
      The saddest cases of all are the domestic lawyers and activists who probably wouldn't been in prison if they hadn't taken the government at its word that there would be more freedom. Hu Jia, an AIDS activist and human rights advocate, gave phone testimony to the EU Parliament last year. He was arrested in December and sentenced in April--while the IOC was in China. Right before the Olympics began, his wife, Zeng Jinyan, disappeared and we don't know if she was arrested or fled with her daughter.

       And then there are the people who tried to use the protest zones set up by the government for the Olympics. You have to register to protest, but anyone who's tried to register has been arrested. It's so cynical of the government to set up these parks and use them to round people up. They're like Potemkin protest zones--they exist in name but not in practice. The idea that you would set up something and not allow people to go--that's not in keeping with the Olympian spirit.

Why do you think the situation got worse this year?
      It's an impulse to control that predates the Olympics. Whenever there's a big event, there's this impulse. And the negative press is principally because of this. China would have gotten a lot of credit if it had allowed the protests.

You recently criticized the IOC in an op-ed you wrote in the International Herald Tribune. What do you think the IOC's responsibility is?
       It's important to step back and remember the "why" and "how" China got [to host] the Olympics. 1989 was the Tianamen Square crackdown. In 1990, Deng said, "China should apply for the Olympics." At that time, China was in a global diplomatic deep freeze. They needed something to sweep away the images of Tiananmen Square. That bid [for the 2000 Olympics] failed, probably because China was not prepared to host the Olympics.
     In 2001, the bid guaranteed human rights improvements and complete media freedom. My favorite line is, "China will live up to its words and turn its words into deeds...The government will honor the promises and commitments made during our bid to host the Games." It highlights how Beijing made these pledges voluntarily. A confident and modern government lives up to its own promises--including those to its own people.

     Richard Pound, who writes a chapter in the book, was there in 1993 and 2001 [for China's two bids]. What was different in 2001 was the inclusion of human rights, which provided an irresistible opportunity, they thought. And he's not an activist--he's a 30-year member of the IOC. It's fair to say that the IOC failed because they were advised well in advance by HRW and others and had numerous opportunities to raise issues about human rights. They could've made the host city contract public. Past contracts have been made public--particularly in the wake of the Salt Lake City bribery scandal. There's no reason the world should not know what China agreed to.
     They also wasted an opportunity not to put into place a human rights mechanism that would hold the host country responsible for abuses. We're pushing for that before the 2014 Sochi [Winter] Olympics in Russia. It needs to be statutory: if the IOC is going to continue to award the Games to human rights abusing countries then there need to be some checks in place--like there are for doping and bribery--so the human rights concerns don't overwhelm the Games.

Did you ever consider a boycott of the 2008 Games?
     HRW did not support a boycott for two reasons. One was practical: so many of the Chinese people support the Games. The other was tactical
because China had made so many pledges to support the human rights and this was an opportunity to try to hold them to it.

HRW's website was recently unblocked in the Olympic media center. How long had it been blocked for?
      Our website was always blocked in China until the Olympics [began].

I found I could access the English-language version--and every language except Chinese.
     At some level, who cares if the English version works? They haven't unblocked the most important part. For starters, it's a violation of the pledges of journalistic freedom. What about journalists who are part of the Beijing press corps? It shows there was a specific effort to block only the Chinese version. It also means the Chinese people are missing an opportunity to see how a human rights organization works. If that site was unblocked, they could see that we also cover human rights violations in the U.S., Russia, and 80 other countries.

What do you think the long-term outlook is for China?
     I think the sad thing is China has done well in showcasing its modernity and architecture. But it missed the opportunity to show what transformed the country and that was reform. China's not going to close up again--the Chinese people won't allow it. The question is, what is the pace of reform?
     The great hope is that once the pressure of the international spotlight is off, reform can continue. Reformists will move forward with processes that have already lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.