Two elderly Chinese women in Beijing, ages 79 and 77, have been sentenced to a year of labor and “re-education” for attempting to get a permit to protest what they claimed was inadequate compensation for their homes that were demolished to make way for the Olympics.

It’s the kind of story that will quickly be buried beneath the avalanche of feel good news about Michael Phelps, Usain Bolt and the USA basketball team. Yet it stands as a harrowing reminder that individual freedoms and human rights for China’s 1.3 billion citizens are by no means safeguarded.

With the world’s attention focused on China and the Beijing Games, people are learning — and seeing for themselves on wall-to-wall television coverage a rapidly growing, market-driven (and sports-crazy) economic juggernaut, but also the globe’s largest and nearly last remaining Communist-controlled government. Its leaders eagerly attempt to project a progressive, ultra-modern image (reflected in the astonishing architecture of many of the Olympic venues), while simultaneously maintaining strict and pervasive control over virtually every aspect of the lives of its citizens.

The famous image of the student blocking a Russian Army tank on a Beijing boulevard in 1989 remains perhaps the picture that most people in the world envision about China. And no wonder. From its repressive policies towards Tibet and religious minorities within its borders to its laissez faire handling of the genocidal regime in the Sudan, China has earned a worldwide reputation as a nation that cares little about fundamental human rights or personal liberties. The shocking revelations earlier this year that thousands of young Chinese were held as work slaves in remote manufacturing plants was, for many, only additional proof that this is a nation where the rights of the individual have no relevance or meaning.

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“Radiohead is taking MTV EXIT to a new level and expanding the Asia campaign, which is on air, online and on the ground,” said Olivier Carduner, USAID’s Regional Mission Director for Asia.

As part of this effort, Radiohead released a music video on MTV on May 1st to the track All I Need, from its album In Rainbows. Filmed by Oscar-winning cinematographer John Seale (”The English Patient”) and award-winning director Steve Rogers, the video depicts a day in the life of both an affluent youngster and a child making shoes in a sweatshop, sending a message that everyone plays a role in trafficking and exploitation.

SHANGHAI - China said Wednesday that it was investigating whether hundreds or perhaps thousands of children from poor areas in the southwest part of the country were sold to work as slave laborers in booming coastal factory cities.

Authorities in southern Guangdong Province, near Hong Kong, said they had already “rescued” more than 100 children from factories in the city of Dongguan, a huge manufacturing center known for producing and exporting toys, textiles and electronics.

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