Rights image haunts China before Games: campaigner

HONG KONG (Reuters) - China has executed far fewer people since being awarded the 2008 Olympics six years ago but the country's poor image on rights still threatens to mar the Games, a human rights campaigner said on Thursday.

Veteran activist John Kamm, whose San Francisco-based Dui Hua Foundation researches political prisoners in China and presses the government to release them, said the number of annual executions in China has fallen by about 40 percent to around 7,500 per year.

Going back a decade, it has fallen 50 percent, he added.

"That works out to about 25,000 people who have not been executed," Kamm told the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong -- a body he once headed before leaving business to pursue human rights work about 17 years ago.

"In my opinion, it is something that giving China the Olympics has helped bring about," he later told reporters, adding that there were also other factors pulling down the number of executions.

Although rights improvements are often rolled back in China, Kamm said he expected the number of executions in China to continue to come down, in part because the top court reclaimed its right to final review of death sentences late last year. The right had been relinquished to local courts in the 1980s.

That step was welcomed by rights groups, and the chief justice said it would mean better oversight of executions and help curb miscarriages of justice.

Still, China suffers a major image problem abroad over widespread rights abuses, and Beijing's support of the government of Sudan, which many say is behind the killings and atrocities in the Darfur region, threatens to mar the Games scheduled to start a year from August.

Kamm cited polls showing that in countries he described as the major medal winners in recent previous Olympics -- the United States, Russia, Japan, France, Germany, Italy and others -- the public image of the Chinese government was poor. He listed 10 suggestions for it to improve its image before the Games.

At the top of the list was changing its stance on Darfur, which marked a departure for the businessman-turned-rights campaigner who has focused on prisoners.

"Unless something is done in Darfur, and if in fact China continues to be associated with the Bashir regime, supporting and propping them up, it cannot be good for the Olympics," said Kamm.

Earlier this week, U.S. presidential candidate Bill Richardson, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said the United States should think about boycotting the 2008 Olympics if Beijing does not do more to help stop the bloodshed in Darfur.

Kamm, who has based his human rights work almost entirely on engagement with Chinese officials, opposed a boycott. Hundreds of prisoners Kamm has lobbied for have won early release or sentence reductions.

China is a major investor in Sudan's oil industry, sells weapons to the government and has invested heavily in its infrastructure.

But so far, China has urged the international community to show patience with Sudan, saying sanctions will hurt efforts for peace in the Western Sudanese region.

It also opposes sending U.N. peacekeepers without Khartoum's consent to Darfur -- where the United Nations estimates that fighting by government-linked militias and rebel groups has killed 200,000 people and forced 2 million more to flee their homes.