When the International Olympic committee voted in 2001 to award China the 2008 Olympics, IOC Director General, Francois Carrard warned that human rights was "a serious issue".
"We are taking the bet that seven years from now we sincerely and dearly hope we shall see many changes," Mr Carrard said in The Observer.
It is now one year away from the 2008 Olympics and the changes promised by the Chinese Communist Party have not materialised. Amnesty International says rather than improving human rights, the Olympics is now acting as a catalyst to increase the use of detention without trial as Beijing attempts to "clean up" its act.
"If the Chinese authorities and the International Olympic Committee are serious about the Olympics having a 'lasting legacy' for China, they should be concerned that the Games are being used as a pretext to entrench and extend forms of detention that have been on China's reform agenda for many years," said Catherine Baber, deputy of Asia Pacific Amnesty International.
Increased detention
The clampdown began last year with a declaration from the Chinese minister for public security, Zhou Yongkang that police should "defend political and social stability".
"We must strike hard at hostile forces both in and outside the nation," Mr Zhou said.
According the Daily Telegraph's Beijing correspondent, Richard Spence, the Chinese Mininster went on to give a list of those the state regards as its principal enemies, which Mr Zhou described as anyone that exhibited "splitism and religious extremism". Since then reports have increased of incarceration or house arrest for actions which constitute the most basic rights.
Apart from the usual suspects of Falun Gong practitioners, Tibetans, Christians and Uygers, one individual "principal enemy" is 50-year-old Ye Guozhu, who is serving a four-year sentence for campaigning against evictions in Beijing to make way for Olympic building projects. Dubbed "the Olympic prisoner" by activists, it has been reported that he suffers from health problems, partly as a result of being beaten with electro-shock batons by guards at Chaobai prison in Beijing. Amnesty International says they consider him a prisoner of conscience and are calling for his immediate release.
Human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng is also being held by police as a prisoner in his own home after being convicted of "inciting subversion" in December 2006. During a four month period in jail, lawyer Gao has said he was handcuffed and fixed to an iron chair with bright lights shining on him for many hours. The American Board of Trial Advocates has invited lawyer Gao to the US to receive an award for his courage in pursuing rule of law in China but as he and his family remain under house arrest it is unlikely he will be able to go.
More recently a number of free speech activists have been rounded up including couple Hu Jia and Zeng Jinyan who had visas to visit Europe for two months but were stopped on the way to the airport the 18th May. According to Reporters without Borders they have been accused of "threatening national security" and have also been placed under house arrest.
"Hu and his wife Zeng are well known for their human rights activism," the press freedom organization said. "Zeng, a constant blogger, was recently included by Time magazine in its list of the world's 100 most influential people.
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