More than 3,500 people from dozens of nations have written to Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao to call for the immediate release of all jailed journalists in a campaign organised by the World Association of Newspapers to draw attention to the issue in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics.

China, the world’s biggest jailer of journalists, was the focus of a global WAN advertising campaign that was carried by newspapers in 20 countries. The advertisements, which highlighted China’s press freedom abuses and noted that at least 30 journalists and 50 cyber-dissidents are being held in Chinese prisons, urged readers to send letters to Premier Wen calling for their release.

The WAN campaign can be found at http://www.wan-press.org/china/home.php (there is still time for newspapers to run the advertisements in support of press freedom in China).

Despite criticism from international organisations and some governments, China has failed to honour the promises of reforms it made in its successful Olympic bid. Most recently, China reneged on a pledge to provide journalists covering the Beijing Olympics with unrestricted internet access and admitted it will censor internet content at the Olympic venues as it does in the rest of the country.

Chinese authorities promised in their successful Olympic bid that media would have "complete freedom to report when they come to China." The authorities have not only failed to honour their pledge, but they have intensified their crackdown on journalists and others who seek to exercise their right to freedom of expression. Foreign journalists now reporting from China are regularly harassed and even expelled, as was the case during the March 2008 events in Tibet.

Conditions are even worse for Chinese journalists themselves: 31 have been jailed since the successful Olympic bid in 2001, and 16 of those remain in prison - half of all Chinese journalists currently in prison.

WAN renewed its call on the International Olympic Committee to hold China to its promises, and has called on all going to the Beijing Olympics -- athletes, sponsors, media partners and others -- to "exert serious pressure on the Chinese authorities to cease their flagrant and persistent abuses of human rights" and to release all jailed journalists.