Beijing Games vows no child labor

Beijing Olympics organizers vowed Monday to come down hard on any cases of children being used to produce merchandise for the Games after a report accused factories of “gross exploitation.”

The report by the Playfair Alliance, released in London, said children as young as 12 were involved in packaging licensed products for next year’s Games at a factory in southern China.

The vice chairman of the Beijing Games organizing committee, Jiang Xiaoyu, said he took such issues seriously and sought “to protect the reputation of the Olympic movement and the Beijing Olympic Games.”

“The Olympic organizing committee is now in the process of verifying this, and if what was in the relevant reports indeed exists the organizing committee will deal with it seriously,” Jiang said in Hong Kong.

The International Olympic Committee said it was not directly responsible for the production of merchandise but said it was committed to “being a socially responsible leader of the Olympic movement.”