HONG KONG – The trial on “subversion” charges of Chinese human rights activist Hu Jia began on Tuesday and effectively ended any lingering pretense that China’s hosting of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing would foster a kinder, gentler government more tolerant of public dissent. Hu Jia’s only “crime” had been to warn of the tightening chokehold on dissent ahead of the Games. His trial and high likelihood of conviction have confirmed that China’s real Olympic game-plan is a calibrated crackdown on groups or individuals who challenge the Beijing Games propaganda juggernaut.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. The Chinese government in 2001 pledged that hosting the 2008 Games would boost development of “democracy and human rights.” Unfortunately, the International Olympic Committee and the majority of foreign governments accepted that assurance at face value and have either ignored the mounting number of well-documented Olympics-related human rights abuses or have restricted their expressions of concern to low-profile private communications with the authorities. 

Mr. Hu’s activist wife Zeng Jinyan and their three-month-old daughter have now been under house arrest for more than 200 days. If convicted, Mr. Hu will join Olympic dissidents including Yang Chulin, detained in July 2007 for his involvement in a petition “We Want Human Rights, Not the Olympics” signed by farmers protesting land seizures; Ye Guozhou, serving a four-year prison sentence for organizing protests against Olympics-related forced evictions; and Wang Ling, sentenced to 15 months of “re-education” in November 2007 for opposing demolition of her property for an Olympics-related project.  

The Chinese government’s comprehensive strategy for containing and stifling popular dissent, debuted ahead of the 17th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing in October, will likely claim more in the weeks and months to come. 

On March 6, human rights lawyer Teng Biao was abducted and held for 40 hours by plainclothes thugs who identified themselves as officers of the Beijing Public Security Bureau. Such treatment highlights the risks inherent in publicly challenging the Chinese government’s carefully crafted Olympics veneer of social harmony and cohesion. The same day, Beijing-based human rights lawyer Li Heping suffered a back injury when his car was rammed by an unmarked police vehicle and three police officers who he said had been shadowing him since January 2008. 

Teng Biao’s abduction was likely related to a letter he co-wrote with Hu Jia in September. It warned that the Chinese government had failed to deliver on promises to the International Olympic Committee to develop human rights in China ahead of the 2008 Olympics. “When you come to the Olympic Games in Beijing, you will see skyscrapers, spacious streets, modern stadiums and enthusiastic people,” they wrote. “You may not know that the flowers, smiles, harmony and prosperity are built on a base of grievances, tears, imprisonment, torture and blood.”

The authorities are already preparing targeted sweeps aimed at purging the city streets of migrant laborers, beggars, petitioners and other “undesirables” that don’t meet the government’s Potemkin Village standards for the “New Beijing” of the 2008 Olympics. Police and plainclothes thugs who appear to operate at official behest will likely continue to harass, detain and intimidate foreign journalists, despite China’s media freedom pledges. 

The leaders in Beijing have calculated—correctly so far—that the international community would be hypnotized by China’s growing economic and diplomatic muscle and unwilling to challenge the worsening human rights situation ahead of the Games. 

But with fewer than five months until the Aug. 8 launch of the Games, it’s a calculation the international community can and should still prove wrong. Foreign governments, the IOC and national Olympic committees can all play meaningful roles in ensuring the Chinese government understands that Olympics-related abuses, such as Mr. Hu’s looming trial, are intolerable and threaten the success of China’s Olympic “coming out party.” China’s modest improvements in its Sudan policy are proof positive that vocal international pressure can motivate the Chinese government to act meaningfully on human rights issues. 

The International Olympic Committee should find its voice to publicly protest these Olympics-related human rights abuses and demand that the Chinese government fulfill the human rights pledges it made to win the right to host the 2008 Games. National Olympic Committees and foreign governments who will send thousands of athletes, journalists and spectators to the Games should likewise speak out about Olympics-related rights abuses that tarnish the Olympic Charter’s commitment to “fundamental ethical principles.” 

Foreign heads of state including U.S. President George W. Bush and U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who have accepted invitations to attend the Beijing Games, should make an improved human rights climate the minimum price of their attendance in August. The alternative—more unseemly silence from the international community about Olympics-related human rights abuses such as Mr. Hu’s prosecution—can only give tacit approval to the Chinese government’s thuggish tactics.

Mr. Kine is a researcher with New York-based Human Rights Watch.