The Olympic flame was lit again on Saturday for the opening ceremony of the Beijing 2008 Paralympic Games. It was, as was the show on 8 August, another grandiose display of Chinese organisation, a show of image above all else.

We’ve established that absolutely NONE of the pre-Olympic promises to improve the human rights situation had been kept during the Games (see Broken promises; It’s all relative and 08.08.08).

Actually, the human rights situation considerably worsened as a direct effect on the Olympics. Here is the catastrophic legacy in a few numbers:

-  Since 2001 - an estimated 1.5 million people forcibly evicted from them homes to make way for Olympic constructions

- 47 pro-Tibet activists had been arrested and at least 50 human rights activists placed under house arrest, harassed or forced to leave Beijing during the games.

- 77 applications to hold protests in designated areas denied. At least 15 people arrested for having applied

- At least, the two 77 and 79-years-old grandmothers, sentenced to 1 year re-education through labour camp for applying to protest saw their condemnation revoked.

- As of 30 June 2008, one human rights organisation estimates the number of political and religious prisoners currently jailed in China at more than 4,500 - not all Olympics-related.

- Another organisation also reported that during the Games, Chinese authorities had collected vast amounts of bio-metric data gathered on foreign tourists, journalists, and government officials

In these days of abysmal conditions of human rights in China, we must more than ever continue to monitor the situation and press Chinese authorities to keep their word. A small sign of hope perhaps, in terms of acknowledging errors: Chinese officials timidly recognised that schools in the Sichuan province had been shoddily constructed and thus collapsed during the earthquake last March. Nothing to do with promises to improve human rights, but nevertheless a small step away from the wrong direction…