WASHINGTON - A U.S. senator is accusing the Chinese government of ordering U.S.-owned hotels in China to install Internet filters that can spy on international visitors coming to see the summer Olympic games.
Senator Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican, made the charge at a Capitol Hill news conference where he and other politicians denounced China's record of human rights abuses.
They are urging President George W. Bush not to attend the opening ceremonies in Beijing.
Brownback says he has seen the language of memos received by at least two U.S.-owned hotels.
He is declining to name them, but says he obtained the information from two "reliable but confidential sources" in the hope that public pressure would persuade the Chinese government to back off the demand.
The senator called China "the foremost enabler of human rights abuses around the world" and said the Chinese government is turning the summer games into "an Olympics of oppression."
"This is wrong, it's against international conventions, it's certainly against the Olympic spirit," Brownback said. "The Chinese government should remove that request and that order."
Beijing has said that its citizens' human rights are protected under the Chinese constitution, and that it welcomed renewed dialogue on the issue. But Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao also has suggested the U.S. politicians were biased in their views.
"We hope relevant people, congressmen, can view our progress made in human rights objectively and take off their coloured glasses. I believe that would be beneficial to the development of Chinese human rights," he said at a news conference in Beijing last month.
For years, critics in the U.S. Congress have taken China to task for what they describe as unfair trade practices; currency manipulation; use of the Internet to suppress dissidents; failure to use its leverage to stop violence in Sudan's Darfur region; and a rapid, secretive military buildup.
Other legislators at Brownbeck's news conference condemned the Chinese government for supporting repressive governments in Sudan and Burma, suppressing dissent in Tibet and forcibly returning North Korean refugees who flee across the border, where they face imprisonment and torture.
Brownback said he would press his case for Bush not to attend the Olympic opening ceremonies when the president visits tornado-damaged Greensburg, Kan., on Sunday.
Thus far, Bush has given no indication he will skip the Beijing event.
