Translation of a July 10 article from the International Herald Leader, a Xinhua-affiliated weekly. Featured on the frontpage of QQ, it was almost certainly the most-read article in China that day. It shows China coming to grips with a critical ad campaign by TBWA, one of several international ad shops that have juxtaposed the country’s human rights abuses with its Olympic optimism. The original article is supplemented with links to photos of the Abu Ghraib scandal of 2004 and 2005, in which American soldiers were documented torturing Iraqi prisoners…

The company TBWA produced “Olympics advertisements” which were extremely insulting to China; the employer behind them is none other than so-called human rights organization Amnesty International.

International Herald Leader intern reporter, Du Xiaojun, released a report from Beijing that “a set of advertisement pictures insulting to China are going around the Internet.”  Recently, this information has been spread abroad by Chinese foreign students in France.

In Reims, France, a Chinese worker, Dong Ming, also saw these advertisements.  He told the International Herald Leader that these pictures recieved the Bronze Lion award at the recently concluded Cannes Advertising Festival.  ”The pictures are the result of what TBWA advertising company planned.”

TBWA advertising company planned these “insulting-to-China” advertisements to consist of three photographs, choosing to use archery, swimming, and weightlifting, and borrowing Olympic sports to allude to China’s abuse of prison labor.  The feeling given to people by the photographs is that China’s prisoners suffer inhuman torture.

Borrowing Olympic items to show “prison cruelty”

For example, in the “archery” advertisement, a Chinese prisoner is bound to a target, his head is lowered, he is wearing a bandage on his head, and there is blood on his chest; standing to one side are armed policemen making self-satisfied faces.

In the “swimming” advertisement, it is not swimmers in the natatorium, but rather two uniformed police officers, their would-be prisoner’s head pressed into the water and pulled out again; the prisoner’s expression is very anguished, his right arm has obvious bruises.

And in the “weightlifting” advertisement, a female prisoner, wearing a dirty prison uniform and handcuffs, has been fastened to a barbell, the skin of her knees obviously bruised and bloodstained, obviously very helpless.  The sentence, “After the Olympic Games, the fight for human rights must go on,” is attached to the bottom right corner of every photograph.

“Too furious, I am obviously too furious for words,” Tian Jie, a foreign student in Canada, told the International Herald Leader after seeing the pictures on the Internet.  Also, Net friends came out as saying, “the designers of the advertisements apparently use the technique of ‘posing actors to take photographs’ for fabrication.  The whole laying-out of the prison torture scene in the photos obviously comes from Amnesty International and the advertising planners’ own subjective theories and falsehoods.”

Amnesty International Comissioned the Design

TBWA currently ranks ninth in the world in terms of global revenue with clients such as Adidas and Apple.  It should be the company who made such extremely libelous “Olympics advertisements” toward China, yet behind this company is actually the so-called human rights organization, Amnesty International.  On www.anti-cnn.com, a Net friend named “Rarefied Air” first broke the story, “The commissioning party for these advertisements was Amnesty International.”

This reporter investigated to find that, in TBWA’s client list, they do not list the “famous” Amnesty International, but on their homepage, they impressively have Amnesty International’s trace*.

In fact, TBWA is not the only advertising company employed by Amnesty International; they also entrust other international advertising companies to make similar “insulting China” advertisements.  In June of this year, a Danish advertising company, “Eternal Beauty,” created this kind of flat** advertisement: one person is crying, tears rolling off his face onto a five-starred red flag symbol.  On the picture, a note explains, “Put pressure on China.”

And last September, a Slovakian advertising company also issued a set of Olympic themed advertising photographs, including the three sports archery, boxing, and wrestling.  On the “archery” picture, a Chinese person is wearing prison garb; on his chest is a card bearing the number 113, and behind his body stands an archer, aiming towards his head.  On the bottom of these three paragraphs, they all have libelous statements explaining China’s prisoner abuse.

These four advertisement photographs made by Danish and Slovakian advertising companies contain not only English slogans but all of them have the “Amnesty International” logo.***

Constantly Criticizing China

In fact, Amnesty International has had an anti-China stance for a long time, criticizing China’s internal problems.  In April of this year, during the Tibetan vandalism and burning indicent, Amnesty International was even more pronounced in its distortion of reports.  The Chinese government criticized Amnesty International many times for their disregard for the facts, and for their libelous language toward China; China resolutely opposes Amnesty International’s actions which sensationalize Chinese human rights problems by using the Olympics, turning the Olympics into politics.

On June 19 of this year, the spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Jiang Yu, noted: “‘Amnesty International,’ this organization persistently adopts bias against China, constantly expressing opinions without meeting the burden of proof, attacking China’s record.  Their statements completely lack the force of public confidence.”

The Vice Chairman of the Chinese Human-Rights Research Institute, Chen Shiqiu, notes: “Amnesty International chooses the eve of the Olympics to release these advertisements which insult China.  It’s just that they want to pretend to uphold the slogan of human rights, smearing and destroying China’s image, as well as achieving the aim of destroying China’s peace and stability, ethnic solidarity****, and social progress.” ❑

— Translated by Chris

ORIGINAL STORY: 大赦国际委托跨国公司捏造中国虐囚广告

EDITOR’S NOTES:
* It bears clarifying that this statement is equally vague in the original Chinese. But the connection is corroborated by the Wall Street Journal’s better researched sources.

** 平面: a plane or flat surface. Meaning unclear in this context.

*** For an example, see an ad by Inkognito in Copenhagen, Denmark, superimposing an Olympic torch runner onto the path of the famous tanks on Chang’an Avenue, approaching Tiananmen square on June 5, 1989. The ad features the words “The true spirit of the Olympics” and the Amnesty International logo. For comparison’s sake, see a Youtube video of the original “tank man” and the PBS Frontline documentary “The Tank Man.”

**** 民族团结: Literally, “nationality join forces” or “ethnic group join forces.” The word 民族 (mínzú) translates as “nationality” in the sense of China’s 56 official nationalities; often, it serves to apply racial connotations to instances of perceived cultural unity. 族 = race, clan, ethnicity, or strain. 民 = people. In the Confucian tradition, 民族 is the family of the people.

Additional Reading:
Danwei — Western ad industry as bad as Western media?
Shanghaiist — Amnesty ads stirring up Chinese internet
Wall Street Journal — Amnesty Spot Creates Olympic Headache for Ad Shop