Wednesday, May 28, 2008
[+/-] : US Jewish leaders call for boycott of Beijing Olympics
US Jewish leaders call for boycott of Beijing Olympics
By ERIC GORSKI(AP)
A wide-ranging group of U.S. Jewish leaders plans to release a statement Wednesday urging Jews worldwide to boycott the Summer Olympics in Beijing, citing China's troubling record on human rights and Tibet.
The statement also notes China's close relationships with Iran, Syria and the militant group Hamas.
So far, 175 rabbis, seminary officials and other prominent Jews have signed the declaration, which comes shortly before Holocaust Remembrance Day on Friday, organizers said.
"We are deeply troubled by China's support for the genocidal government of Sudan; its mistreatment of the people of Tibet; its denial of basic rights to its own citizens; and its provision of missiles to Iran and Syria, and friendship for Hamas," the statement reads.
"Having endured the bitter experience of abandonment by our presumed allies during the Holocaust, we feel a particular obligation to speak out against injustice and persecution today."
Rabbi Yitz Greenberg, past chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, said signers are not alleging that the Chinese government is the equivalent of the Nazi regime, but that China, like Germany in 1936, is trying to use the Olympics as a public relations tool to deflect attention from its record.
The declaration was organized by Greenberg and Rabbi Haskel Lookstein of New York _ both Orthodox Jews _ and the Washington-based David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies.
Several representatives of Judaism's major U.S. branches and large Jewish institutions signed on. They include Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism; Neil Goldstein and Richard Gordon of the American Jewish Congress; and Rabbi Joel Meyers, executive vice president of the Rabbinical Assembly, an association of Conservative rabbis.
The statement seizes on Olympic organizers' plans for a kosher kitchen at the Olympic Village, where athletes stay. Greenberg characterized the move as an attempt to lure Jewish tourists by presenting an image of sensitivity.
"I would say in principle, athletes and tourists and governments should all draw the same conclusion to this," Greenberg said. "Unless the Chinese make some significant corrections, they should not participate."
Meyers said he hopes the declaration is interpreted as a call for Israel and Jewish athletes worldwide to boycott the games, although he doubts such a boycott will come to pass.
"It would be good if that happened," Meyers said. "(But) I know Israel has political ties to China, and does business with China. It presents a somewhat awkward issue for Israel."
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[+/-] : China needs to stop playing games
China needs to stop playing games
As 20,000 journalists get ready for the Beijing Olympics, just how much freedom will they have to report what is happening on and off the track?
by Phil Harding , The Guardian, Monday May 26 2008
In Beijing's bid for the 2008 Olympics, the guarantee was clear and unmistakable: "there will be no restrictions on media reporting and movement of journalists up to and including the Olympic games".
In a country that keeps such a tight grip on its own media and which severely restricts access to its markets by foreign media companies - resisting even the persistent blandishments of Rupert Murdoch - it is a guarantee that has been hotly disputed ever since. In just under three months' time, amid some very mixed signals from the authorities, just over 20,000 journalists and broadcasters will descend on the Chinese capital to put it to the test.
Ever since the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced in 2001 that this year's games had been awarded to Beijing, it has been clear that they were going to be the most politically sensitive since the boycotted Moscow Olympics of 1980, possibly even since the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Ashling O'Connor, Olympics correspondent for the Times, believes that is bound to shape the reporting: "Normally once the games actually begin, the coverage is pretty much confined to the sports pages. This time because the Chinese authorities have left so many questions unanswered these games are going to be on the news and foreign pages too."
Free to travel
The journalist advocacy group, Reporters Without Borders, has singled out China as the world's leading jailer of journalists, with at least 33 imprisoned at the start of this year. Sports and news editors' in-boxes have been flooded with emails from human rights groups. Given the highly controversial nature of these games and given China's record on media freedom is it going to be possible to report freely?
Lindsey Hilsum, Beijing correspondent for Channel 4 News, says the big tests will come when the games start: "Will the internet really be uncensored? Will journalists be free to travel? Will CNN and BBC World not be blacked out any more?"
In January 2007 the Chinese Foreign Ministry announced that accredited foreign journalists would be free to travel in China, outside Tibet and the Muslim western region of Xinjiang, without official permission. In practice, this has only partly happened. In the last fortnight access for the foreign media to the disaster areas of the Sichuan earthquake has been relatively unrestricted. But during the Tibet disturbances in March more than 40 journalists were turned away from covering protests in neighbouring regions, and some were detained. The Guardian's Jonathan Watts made a video of his frustrating trip calling it "7 Days not in Tibet".
The important difference is that the Tibet protests were political, the earthquake emergency is not. Jon Williams, the BBC's world news editor, says of the government's attitude overall: "When they've been good, they've been very good, when they've been bad they've been horrid."
Free access to the internet in China - another promise for the Olympics - has always been problematic. Via the "Great FireWall of China", there is strict control on what can be seen and what can't. When challenged over access to the BBC news site, the Chinese government always denied blocking and cited "technical problems". This year in March during the Tibet demonstrations, the Guardian site was briefly blocked in China for the first time.
Then at the end of March - and just before an inspection visit by the IOC - the BBC News site in English suddenly and without explanation was unblocked for the first time in 10 years. But the BBC's Chinese-language site has stayed off limits. The internet now mirrors what happens with the World Service's radio broadcasts where the Chinese broadcasts are jammed while the English programmes are not.
After their most recent visit, the IOC said they "were satisfied by the assurances we received across a number of areas including internet access". But a month later, China's technology minister, Wan Gang, was less clear: "I've not got any clear information about which sites will be screened or shut ... Every country limits access to some websites". According to Hilsum, internet access still "comes and goes", Wikipedia sometimes disappears, sites such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International are still blocked: "I would not be surprised if all the English sites are unblocked for the three weeks of the Olympics. The big issue will be what happens after that."
The most important window on this summer's games will be television. It is the television images that will set the tone for the games. The worldwide audience is expected to top 4 billion viewers. Dave Gordon, who as BBC Sport's head of major events is in overall charge of the BBC's Olympic coverage, says: "This to me is a huge challenge of a story. My first Olympics was Moscow. This is even more of a challenge." It is significant that for these games the BBC has decided not to treat the opening ceremony as just another sporting event. Its coverage will be fronted by Huw Edwards from News alongside Hazel Irvine from Sport with expert analysis from Carrie Gracie, the former Beijing correspondent.
Pictures of the ceremony and sporting events will come almost exclusively from a pool feed provided by the Olympic host broadcaster, Beijing Olympic Broadcasting, a joint Chinese-foreign company set up specifically for these games. For each event there will be one set of identical pictures from each venue available to each broadcast rights holder. In all there will be some 3,800 hours of live feeds. At any one time broadcasters will have up to 20 feeds coming in. As the Chinese have a track record of censoring television coverage they don't like, possible censorship of the Olympics has become a real issue.
At one time it was reported that the Chinese authorities had asked for a delay on the live feeds. But Gordon says: "We have been given absolute assurances that the feeds will be live." But what is not yet clear is what the policy of the host broadcaster will be on coverage of any demonstrations. For Gordon this is fundamental: "We will expect all events to be fully covered in the stadium whether it's on the field or off the field action. We don't want any editorial decisions made for us." But, just in case, the BBC will have its own unilateral cameras at some events "able to capture what we need if we need to".
French television has said if there is any censorship of the pictures, they will boycott coverage. What can domestic Chinese audiences expect to see during the Olympics? Until the non-stop coverage of the earthquake eclipsed all other news, the tone of much of the Olympic coverage on CCTV had been remorselessly upbeat and euphoric. Step-by-step reports on the progress of the torch relay through China were regularly the lead item on the news. On one day just the dress rehearsal for the relay in Macao made the second lead. Coverage of the earlier protests in the west was much more circumspect. What has also come across strongly from Chinese media coverage is the real sense of hurt and anger at the way the western media have concentrated so much on protests and abuses of human rights. Both the BBC and CNN have encountered fierce protests about their coverage (there is now a Chinese website called anti-cnn.com). Many of the comments also seem to express genuine puzzlement at what they see as the dismissal of China's best efforts to offer the world a peaceful torch rally, coupled with a spectacular Olympics. Some bloggers see a western-led conspiracy between Washington and Paris.
In the next few weeks the media spotlight will inevitably switch away from the earthquake and back to the Olympics. For those covering the games, it will be a tricky and pressurised time. If the Olympics are portrayed as a well-organised success, the media will be accused of falling for a Chinese propaganda exercise. On the other hand, if there are protests and they are properly covered, there will be accusations from the Chinese that the actions of an unrepresentative minority have been magnified out of proportion. Jon Williams warns against journalists going to China with too many preconceptions: "It would be wrong for us to start with a fixed mind to cover the games through the prism of Tibet and protest. But on the other hand we have to be prepared for any events if they do happen."
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As 20,000 journalists get ready for the Beijing Olympics, just how much freedom will they have to report what is happening on and off the track?
by Phil Harding , The Guardian, Monday May 26 2008
In Beijing's bid for the 2008 Olympics, the guarantee was clear and unmistakable: "there will be no restrictions on media reporting and movement of journalists up to and including the Olympic games".
In a country that keeps such a tight grip on its own media and which severely restricts access to its markets by foreign media companies - resisting even the persistent blandishments of Rupert Murdoch - it is a guarantee that has been hotly disputed ever since. In just under three months' time, amid some very mixed signals from the authorities, just over 20,000 journalists and broadcasters will descend on the Chinese capital to put it to the test.
Ever since the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced in 2001 that this year's games had been awarded to Beijing, it has been clear that they were going to be the most politically sensitive since the boycotted Moscow Olympics of 1980, possibly even since the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Ashling O'Connor, Olympics correspondent for the Times, believes that is bound to shape the reporting: "Normally once the games actually begin, the coverage is pretty much confined to the sports pages. This time because the Chinese authorities have left so many questions unanswered these games are going to be on the news and foreign pages too."
Free to travel
The journalist advocacy group, Reporters Without Borders, has singled out China as the world's leading jailer of journalists, with at least 33 imprisoned at the start of this year. Sports and news editors' in-boxes have been flooded with emails from human rights groups. Given the highly controversial nature of these games and given China's record on media freedom is it going to be possible to report freely?
Lindsey Hilsum, Beijing correspondent for Channel 4 News, says the big tests will come when the games start: "Will the internet really be uncensored? Will journalists be free to travel? Will CNN and BBC World not be blacked out any more?"
In January 2007 the Chinese Foreign Ministry announced that accredited foreign journalists would be free to travel in China, outside Tibet and the Muslim western region of Xinjiang, without official permission. In practice, this has only partly happened. In the last fortnight access for the foreign media to the disaster areas of the Sichuan earthquake has been relatively unrestricted. But during the Tibet disturbances in March more than 40 journalists were turned away from covering protests in neighbouring regions, and some were detained. The Guardian's Jonathan Watts made a video of his frustrating trip calling it "7 Days not in Tibet".
The important difference is that the Tibet protests were political, the earthquake emergency is not. Jon Williams, the BBC's world news editor, says of the government's attitude overall: "When they've been good, they've been very good, when they've been bad they've been horrid."
Free access to the internet in China - another promise for the Olympics - has always been problematic. Via the "Great FireWall of China", there is strict control on what can be seen and what can't. When challenged over access to the BBC news site, the Chinese government always denied blocking and cited "technical problems". This year in March during the Tibet demonstrations, the Guardian site was briefly blocked in China for the first time.
Then at the end of March - and just before an inspection visit by the IOC - the BBC News site in English suddenly and without explanation was unblocked for the first time in 10 years. But the BBC's Chinese-language site has stayed off limits. The internet now mirrors what happens with the World Service's radio broadcasts where the Chinese broadcasts are jammed while the English programmes are not.
After their most recent visit, the IOC said they "were satisfied by the assurances we received across a number of areas including internet access". But a month later, China's technology minister, Wan Gang, was less clear: "I've not got any clear information about which sites will be screened or shut ... Every country limits access to some websites". According to Hilsum, internet access still "comes and goes", Wikipedia sometimes disappears, sites such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International are still blocked: "I would not be surprised if all the English sites are unblocked for the three weeks of the Olympics. The big issue will be what happens after that."
The most important window on this summer's games will be television. It is the television images that will set the tone for the games. The worldwide audience is expected to top 4 billion viewers. Dave Gordon, who as BBC Sport's head of major events is in overall charge of the BBC's Olympic coverage, says: "This to me is a huge challenge of a story. My first Olympics was Moscow. This is even more of a challenge." It is significant that for these games the BBC has decided not to treat the opening ceremony as just another sporting event. Its coverage will be fronted by Huw Edwards from News alongside Hazel Irvine from Sport with expert analysis from Carrie Gracie, the former Beijing correspondent.
Pictures of the ceremony and sporting events will come almost exclusively from a pool feed provided by the Olympic host broadcaster, Beijing Olympic Broadcasting, a joint Chinese-foreign company set up specifically for these games. For each event there will be one set of identical pictures from each venue available to each broadcast rights holder. In all there will be some 3,800 hours of live feeds. At any one time broadcasters will have up to 20 feeds coming in. As the Chinese have a track record of censoring television coverage they don't like, possible censorship of the Olympics has become a real issue.
At one time it was reported that the Chinese authorities had asked for a delay on the live feeds. But Gordon says: "We have been given absolute assurances that the feeds will be live." But what is not yet clear is what the policy of the host broadcaster will be on coverage of any demonstrations. For Gordon this is fundamental: "We will expect all events to be fully covered in the stadium whether it's on the field or off the field action. We don't want any editorial decisions made for us." But, just in case, the BBC will have its own unilateral cameras at some events "able to capture what we need if we need to".
French television has said if there is any censorship of the pictures, they will boycott coverage. What can domestic Chinese audiences expect to see during the Olympics? Until the non-stop coverage of the earthquake eclipsed all other news, the tone of much of the Olympic coverage on CCTV had been remorselessly upbeat and euphoric. Step-by-step reports on the progress of the torch relay through China were regularly the lead item on the news. On one day just the dress rehearsal for the relay in Macao made the second lead. Coverage of the earlier protests in the west was much more circumspect. What has also come across strongly from Chinese media coverage is the real sense of hurt and anger at the way the western media have concentrated so much on protests and abuses of human rights. Both the BBC and CNN have encountered fierce protests about their coverage (there is now a Chinese website called anti-cnn.com). Many of the comments also seem to express genuine puzzlement at what they see as the dismissal of China's best efforts to offer the world a peaceful torch rally, coupled with a spectacular Olympics. Some bloggers see a western-led conspiracy between Washington and Paris.
In the next few weeks the media spotlight will inevitably switch away from the earthquake and back to the Olympics. For those covering the games, it will be a tricky and pressurised time. If the Olympics are portrayed as a well-organised success, the media will be accused of falling for a Chinese propaganda exercise. On the other hand, if there are protests and they are properly covered, there will be accusations from the Chinese that the actions of an unrepresentative minority have been magnified out of proportion. Jon Williams warns against journalists going to China with too many preconceptions: "It would be wrong for us to start with a fixed mind to cover the games through the prism of Tibet and protest. But on the other hand we have to be prepared for any events if they do happen."
...
Read more
Thursday, May 22, 2008
[+/-] : Beijing Olympic Games: Dalai Lama calls for boycott of opening ceremony
Beijing Olympic Games: Dalai Lama calls for boycott of opening ceremony
By Stephen Adams 23/05/2008
The Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual leader, has called on Western governments to boycott the Olympic Games’ opening ceremony in Beijing if they think it will put pressure on the Chinese government to change.
But he said if they thought they could achieve more through diplomatic means, they should attend the ceremony.
Speaking during a high-profile 11-day tour of Britain, he also confirmed it was Gordon Brown’s decision to hold their meeting tomorrow away from Number 10, in a bid not to offend the Chinese.
The Dalai Lama is due to meet the Prime Minister at Lambeth Palace, the official residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury.
He is also due to meet with House of Commons’ Foreign Affairs Committee to lobby his cause today.
In the interview with the BBC , the Buddhist spiritual leader, 73, said of the Olympics’ opening ceremony: “Right from the beginning I fully support about the Olympic Games. Meantime I have also made clear the world takes this opportunity to remind the Chinese government about poor record on human rights, religious freedom and environment. The Chinese leadership should pay more attention.”
Asked whether politicians and others should attend the opening ceremony if invited, he said: “[If an ] individual feel [that is] the best way to remind them [is] not [to[ attend, don’t do it.”
But he qualified that: “If they feel to talk, to meet with Chinese leaders, that’s more effective, then go there.”
On the question of where his meeting with Mr Brown is to be held today, the Dalai Lama said: “From my part there’s no differences, so long as the meeting [takes place]. So perhaps I think [with] our meeting, the Prime Minister I think, is becoming more spiritual minded.”
He accepted the Prime Minister did not want to receive him at Number 10 for “economy reasons”.
The Bhuddist spiritual leader, 73, said he was fully committed to a “middle way” of bringing greater autonomy for Tibet, but said he did not want the disputed province to break away entirely from the Chinese state.
Asked what exactly he wanted for Tibet, he replied: “We are not seeking separation. It is in our own interest to remain within China.”
“Defence and foreign affairs should be carried by central [Chinese] government but the rest of business - education and environment, religious work - should be handled by Tibetans themselves. That’s meaningful autonomy.”
He said he thought the Chinese leadership “should take a more liberal way, a more open way, to look towards Tibet.”
Despite the recent crackdown which Tibetan authorities claim left 203 civilians dead - a figure denied by the Chinese - he said he was “quite optimistic” about prospects for his homeland.
But he admitted his people were getting “frustrated” with the lack of progress towards greater autonomy.
“The longer time [there is] no improvement inside Tibet and ruthless suppression continue, then more frustration.”
On Friday he will also plant a tree at Clarence House in the presence of the Prince of Wales.
The pair have met a number of times before, with Charles known to be a keen admirer of the Dalai Lama.
The Tibetan holy man will also deliver a speech on Universal Responsibility in the Modern World at the Royal Albert Hall.
Story from Telegraph News:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2006564/Beijing-Olympic-Games-Dalai-Lama-calls-for-boycott-of-opening-ceremony.html
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[+/-] : Tibetan ‘Olympics’ hit a number of hurdles
Tibetan ‘Olympics’ hit a number of hurdles
AFP, DHARAMSHALA, INDIA Friday, May 23, 2008, Published on Taipei Times
A mock “Olympics” being held as an anti-China protest by Tibetan exiles in India has failed to attract sponsors and cannot even afford to pay out the prize money on offer, organizers say.
The alternative Olympics, which has just 23 participants, comes less than three months before the real games in Beijing and will feature sports such as swimming, archery and shooting.
Catherine Schuetze, an Australian acting as clerk for the “Tibetan Olympics”, said lack of money was threatening the event, which starts Thursday in Dharamshala, home to the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama.
“We’re stripping expenses to the bone and we’re still about to run out of money,” she said. “There’s a desperate need for sponsors, donations — anything.”
The Tibetan games’ organizer, Lobsang Wangyal, warned he did not have enough cash to hand out US$8,000 in promised prize money.
“I’ve got just 40,000 rupees (US$930) and total expenses are expected to be well over 2 million rupees,” said Wangyal, who planned the event as a protest against Chinese rule in his remote Himalayan homeland.
Organizers face other problems as the exiled Tibetan administration in Dharamsala has turned its back on the event, which it views as too insulting to China and likely to damage the prospects of future talks.
The Tibetan administration favors the Dalai Lama’s goal of “meaningful autonomy” for the region within China, rather than the full independence demanded by more radical Tibetans — such as those behind the sports event.
The Dalai Lama’s Tibetan government-in-exile on Wednesday also called for a suspension of protests against China as a mark of respect to victims of this month’s devastating earthquake.
The Dalai Lama has been at pains to assert he supports China as the Olympic host and has distanced himself from the protests that dogged the global torch relay.
The Dharamsala event is also causing embarrassment for its unwilling host India, which has allowed the Tibetan exiles sanctuary as long as they do not use the soil as a springboard for anti-Chinese activities.
But games director Wangyal said the Tibetan Olympics were “not being held to counter the Beijing Olympics.”
Besides Schuetze, volunteers from France, Italy, Peru, Egypt, Japan, Israel, Germany and the US have teamed up to help.
“But it’s hard work without funds,” said Susan Hayano, a US photographer who has been drafted into action to take pictures of the games.
Despite the lack of official enthusiasm for the Dharamsala event, the competitors were upbeat.
“I’ve participated in many anti-China protests and I thought this one’s going to be cool as there’ll be no police to beat us up,” said 22-year-old Tenzin Dhadon, who traveled from Nepal to take part in the javelin.
Ten women and 13 men aged between 18 and 30 have been practicing for the past week for the games and the three top winners will receive hand-crafted gold-plated medals.
However, the mountainous topography has imposed restrictions on some events. The 100m dash has been shortened to just 24m because of lack of flat land.
Chinese-controlled Tibet was rocked by unrest in March, and the Tibetan government-in-exile says 203 Tibetans were killed and 1,000 injured in China’s subsequent crackdown.
China says Tibetan “rioters” and “insurgents” killed 21 people, and has accused the Dalai Lama of trying to sabotage the Beijing Olympics — a charge the Tibetan spiritual leader denies.
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Tuesday, May 20, 2008
[+/-] : BEIJING: WE ARE READY
STUDENTS FOR A FREE TIBET
BEIJING: WE ARE READY
"If...human rights are not acted upon to our satisfaction then we will act." Jacques Rogge, IOC President on China, ... all » BBC's Hardtalk, April 2002
December 10th, International Human Rights Day, is a day set-aside to recognize the inherent rights of every individual. The IOC promised in 2001, when they awarded China the 2008 Summer Olympics, that the Games would bring an improvement in the human right situation in China.
In reality, the human rights situation in China and Tibet is growing steadily worse. In the lead up to the Beijing Olympics, Chinese authorities are intensifying their crackdown on freedom of religion, assembly and expression in Tibet.
Just last month in Eastern Tibet, Runggye Adak (http://actionnetwork . org/campaign/runggye_ adak), a 52 year-old father of eleven, was sentenced to eight years in prison for simply calling for the return of the Dalai Lama to Tibet.
China is clearly a human rights failure. And yet, the IOC remains silent.
But Tibetans and their supporters around the world are speaking out. In the lead up to August 2008, we are shining the spotlight on China's brutal occupation of Tibet and failed human rights record.
HOW CAN YOU HELP?
1) Download and watch SFT HQ's "Beijing: We are Ready" video and spread the word on UTube/ Flickr/ Facebook/ Hi5/ Blog/ website or other social networking site. Screen the film on campus or in your community.
2) Create your own "Beijing: We are Ready" video, upload it to UTube, and send the link to tv@studentsforafreetibet . org.
3) Call on the International Olympic Committee to speak out for Tibet: www . studentsforafreetibet . org/IOC
4) Join Team Tibet - a movement of people around the world who believe in freedom and justice for Tibet. Click here (http://www . supportteamtibet . org/supporter/new) to add your name to the international list of Team Tibet supporters.
5) Check out (hyperlink: http://www . indiemerchstore . com/sft) SFT's stylish line of Team Tibet Gear and spread the world about Team Tibet!
6) Click here (http://www . studentsforafreetibet . org/olympics) to find out more about SFT's 2008 Beijing Olympics campaign.
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[+/-] : Students’ body asks athletes to quit Games
Students’ body asks athletes to quit Games
By AMIT AGNIHOTRI
New Delhi, May 19: The All India Tibetan College Students’ Mass Movement has appealed to the athletes to boycott the Beijing Olympics if China continues to suppress the innocent Tibetans for expressing their love for freedom.
"We appeal to the athletes to consider boycotting the Beijing Olympics if the Chinese government continues to suppress the Tibetans for showing their love for human dignity," said All India Tibetan College Students’ Mass Movement member Tenzin Morkyi. The college students’ body has also asked the Chinese government to immediately hold a meaningful dialogue with the Dalai Lama, reconsider its agreement on human rights improvement and free media coverage in Tibet.
Concerned over the whereabouts of their fellow students in Tibet, the group members said that they "want the Chinese government to explain the fate of Tibetans university students who are missing after expressing their solidarity with the Tibetans killed in Tibet".
Calling for a UN intervention, the students have appealed to the international body to send a team to check the reality in Tibet and investigate the human rights violations there.
The body, which has been formed as a result of realistic demands and several emergency meetings held by representatives of 14 prominent regions, is going to launch a membership drive from May 21.
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By AMIT AGNIHOTRI
New Delhi, May 19: The All India Tibetan College Students’ Mass Movement has appealed to the athletes to boycott the Beijing Olympics if China continues to suppress the innocent Tibetans for expressing their love for freedom.
"We appeal to the athletes to consider boycotting the Beijing Olympics if the Chinese government continues to suppress the Tibetans for showing their love for human dignity," said All India Tibetan College Students’ Mass Movement member Tenzin Morkyi. The college students’ body has also asked the Chinese government to immediately hold a meaningful dialogue with the Dalai Lama, reconsider its agreement on human rights improvement and free media coverage in Tibet.
Concerned over the whereabouts of their fellow students in Tibet, the group members said that they "want the Chinese government to explain the fate of Tibetans university students who are missing after expressing their solidarity with the Tibetans killed in Tibet".
Calling for a UN intervention, the students have appealed to the international body to send a team to check the reality in Tibet and investigate the human rights violations there.
The body, which has been formed as a result of realistic demands and several emergency meetings held by representatives of 14 prominent regions, is going to launch a membership drive from May 21.
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Monday, May 19, 2008
[+/-] : Will the Beijing Olympics ultimately help or hurt the cause of freedom in China?
Playing for Keeps: A Symposium
By THE AMERICAN
From the May/June 2008 Issue
Filed under: World Watch
Will the Beijing Olympics ultimately help or hurt the cause of freedom in China? THE AMERICAN asked eight experts.
From August 8 to August 24, China’s capital city will host the 29th Summer Olympics. It promises to be as much a political event as an athletic spectacle. With that in mind, THE AMERICAN asked eight China experts to answer this question: Will the Beijing Olympics ultimately help or hurt the cause of freedom in China? Here are their responses.
DAN BLUMENTHAL
During the 2008 Summer Olympics, 600,000 armband-wearing citizen volunteers will join 90,000 police, military, and paramilitary forces in Beijing, flush with hundreds of millions of dollars to spend on security technology to help enforce the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) writ. No one should be under any illusion that the Olympics will pry China open. On the contrary, the party’s repressive techniques will grow stronger thanks to Western technology and training. The requirements for security technology in Beijing are large, and Western companies are rushing in to meet them. Some American companies are installing surveillance systems, while others are providing networks of security cameras.
As the former head of criminal intelligence for Hong Kong puts it, “They are certainly getting the best stuff.” The “best stuff” is similar to the technology that was supposed to liberalize China throughout the 1990s. It didn’t. Instead, Internet and telecommunications technology was put to work by the Communist regime against its citizens. The news that grabs headlines—for example, when Western companies provide Chinese authorities with the IP addresses of known dissidents—tells just part of the story of a Chinese security apparatus that has grown stronger through international commerce. Even before the Olympics, tens of thousands of Internet police monitored antiparty activities each day. During and after the Olympics, this number will certainly grow.
The Olympics will not pry China open. The Communist Party’s repressive techniques will grow stronger thanks to Western technology and training.After the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, many foreign experts predicted that the days of one-party rule were numbered. But that was 20 years ago, and the CCP is still very much in power. True, it survives thanks to impressive economic growth. But no less important is the CCP’s acquisition of sophisticated and modern technology to squelch dissent. The party simply has more resources to employ against those trying to use new technologies to push for a more open China.
In other words, by deepening trade with China, in particular technology trade, the West threw the CCP a lifeline. Although the “Tiananmen Sanctions” were meant to prohibit the sale of goods and services that would improve the repressive means of the state, there is simply no way for companies to ensure that technologies sold for commercial purposes are not diverted to police or security use. The Olympics have further opened the spigots.
All countries, including China, have legitimate concerns about terrorist threats during the Olympics. The problem is that the CCP’s definition of “terrorist” includes Tibetans and Uighurs agitating for greater religious and cultural freedom. Indeed, as Liu Shaowu, a senior Chinese official in charge of Olympic security, has stated, the CCP has set its sights on anyone taking part in any protest. Even democratic countries err on the side of more centralized power when faced with potential threats. But China is not a democratic country: there are no checks on power, and there is no recourse for a citizen whose rights are abused. The ruling elite uses legitimate security concerns as excuses to become even more dictatorial.
With foreign journalists pouring into China during the Olympics, there will surely be protests against the CCP. But if the 1990s are any lesson, the Chinese Communists will emerge stronger, prouder, and more sophisticated in their repressive techniques, and they will be armed with the finest Western technologies to crush dissent well past the Olympics.
Dan Blumenthal is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
JACQUES DELISLE
The Olympics are likely to have a modestly positive impact on freedom, civil and political rights, and kindred values in China. This unexciting prospect is more plausible than predictions that Beijing 2008 will bring a reprise of the 1988 Seoul Games (sometimes credited with expediting South Korea’s democratization) or the 1980 Moscow Games (sometimes interpreted as hastening Gorbachev’s reforms, and thus the demise of Soviet Communism). Marginal change is also more likely than the bleak vision of a Beijing Olympiad reminiscent of the 1936 Berlin Games, which handed an odious host regime a propaganda coup.
Having led China through meteoric economic growth and rapid ascension as a regional and aspiring great power, the reform-era Chinese regime is far more resilient than its counterparts in South Korea and the Soviet Union were during the 1980s. Also, China remains below the level of affluence and related social changes that presaged democratization in South Korea and other East Asian countries. On the other hand, and despite heavy investment in Games-related security and the suppression of Games-linked dissent, China has come a long way from its Maoist past. It has engaged the outside world’s norms and institutions, introducing freedoms and openness that would have been unimaginable under Mao.
To be sure, the run-up to the Olympics has included much that is bad for freedom and human rights. The regime has used poorly paid and mistreated migrant workers to build Olympics-related projects; it has ousted urban residents to make room for that construction; it has quashed many protesters (including those calling for Tibetan autonomy, religious freedom, freedom of the press, property rights, and labor rights); and it has scolded, without apparent irony, its critics for “politicizing” the Games.
If the Games present China as a powerful and capable state, this will increase expectations that China live up to international human rights standards.Still, the net effect of the Olympics is likely to be favorable. If the Games go smoothly, this should boost Chinese rulers’ confidence that the liberalizing influences the Olympics foster do not threaten their political order. If the Games present China as a powerful and capable state, this also will increase expectations that China live up to international human rights standards. If the regime does not respond, Beijing will find it harder to persuade the world that China’s rise will be “peaceful” and “harmonious.”
If the Games show the regime’s repressive face—especially if there are telegenic moments akin to the lone man standing before the tanks in Tiananmen Square or a military vehicle toppling the “Goddess of Democracy”—then post-Olympics China will have a more difficult time achieving the international recognition and rehabilitation the Games were supposed to provide, as they variously did for South Korea in 1988, Germany in 1972, and Japan in 1964. More broadly, the Olympics likely will increase China’s openness to international ideas and foreigners’ monitoring of its human rights record. While global attention to China will wane, it is unlikely to recede to pre-Olympics levels. At least in the long run the Beijing Games promise to be another small step in China’s long march toward greater global engagement and political transparency.
Jacques deLisle is the Stephen A. Cozen Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania and director of the Asia Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.
JAMES A. DORN
Will the Beijing Olympics ultimately help or hurt the cause of freedom in China? Once one realizes that any expansion of trade—in goods, sports, ideas, or capital—widens the range of individual choice, the answer to this question is obvious. The Olympic Games will link China more closely to the free world, and the millions of people who view the Games will see firsthand the progress China has made since it opened to the outside world 30 years ago.
But the world will also hear the cries of demonstrators who rightly recognize the repression of human rights in China. Those protests, however, should not shut down the Games and deny Chinese and other athletes the opportunity to pursue their dreams of winning Olympic gold.
China has come a long way since Mao Zedong made capitalism a crime and abolished private property, but the CCP has yet to accept the basic principle of freedom. Today, Chinese people are allowed to own their own homes and are free to start their own businesses, to work in the nonstate sector, and to travel and trade.
The Olympics will allow the Chinese to take pride in their progress and to show the rest of the world that China is a peaceful rising power, not an inevitable enemy of the West.But the state continues to deny people freedom of expression and to maintain its monopoly on political power. Nonetheless, one should not lose sight of the positive impact of economic liberalization. As Jianying Zha, author of China Pop, has noted, “The economic reforms have created new opportunities, new dreams, and to some extent, a new atmosphere and new mindsets…. There is a growing sense of increased space for personal freedom.”
In March 2004, the National People’s Congress (NPC) amended the official Chinese constitution, which now proclaims, “The lawful private property of citizens is inviolable.” And in 2007, the NPC passed a landmark property law to better protect ownership rights. Such legal changes would have been unthinkable during Mao’s reign.
In 1978, China’s foreign trade sector barely existed and was dominated by a handful of state trading companies. Today, the foreign trade sector is open to virtually anyone, and China is the world’s third-largest trading nation. The transition from central planning to a “socialist market economy” has allowed millions of people to escape from poverty and has increased the demand for safeguarding newly acquired property.
The Beijing Olympics will allow the Chinese people to take pride in the progress they have made and to show the rest of the world that China is a peaceful rising power, not an inevitable enemy of the West. “Peaceful development” has been the mantra of China’s leaders since 1978. Their primary goal has been economic development. Treating China like Cuba or North Korea would be counterproductive.
We should recognize the progress China has made and hope for a peaceful and prosperous China. However, we should not confuse market socialism with market liberalism. More importantly, we should remind the Chinese leadership that official proclamations of human rights must be backed up with institutions that limit the power of government and allow people freedom under a just rule of law.
Brave protesters are reminding the world of what still needs to be done in the cause of Chinese freedom. Their voices should not be shut out in the quest for Olympic gold.
James A. Dorn is a China specialist at the Cato Institute and editor of The Cato Journal.
DAVID S. G. GOODMAN
There is considerably more freedom in China today than there was at the height of the Mao era in the early 1970s. Economically, politically, and socially, the degree of personal freedom has continued to increase since the early 1980s, even though change has sometimes been fitful. It is hard to see how the 2008 Olympics can have anything other than a slight impact on the pattern of developing freedom.
The increase in economic freedom has been the most dramatic change in China during the last three decades: for entrepreneurs, managers, and peasants. We have seen the emergence of an entrepreneurial class that has sped up the pace of growth and change. In a very real sense, economic freedom has made it possible for Beijing to host the Olympics, both by integrating China into the world economy and by providing the party-state with the resources to finance the event. If the unveiling of the new buildings and infrastructure associated with the Olympics is a reliable guide, the Games will showcase the achievements of economic liberalization.
It is unlikely that the Games will expedite China’s social liberalization. In fact, the continued evolution of domestic freedoms may be temporarily halted.Many foreign observers have expected China’s integration into the world economy and its economic development to lead almost automatically to increased political freedom. There have indeed been some gains. Independent political space has expanded, albeit slowly, which has made room for a range of new institutions, including chambers of commerce, nongovernmental organizations, and even loosely defined “activist” groups. All the same, more dramatic political change is unlikely absent a major reform movement within the CCP, a state crisis, and widespread unrest. And in any case, the Olympic Games are not likely to affect this trajectory.
Socially, Chinese people have won many new freedoms. For example, it has become much easier to move around China in search of work or leisure. Employment opportunities are more market-driven than ever before. The standard of living has improved dramatically for most people, providing them with greater opportunities for personal expression. Cultural activities and artistic expression have started to flourish, with the aid of greater private funding.
At the same time, there is little doubt that social customs and China’s entrenched inequalities of class, sex, and region have been slower to change. For that matter, it is unlikely that the Summer Games will expedite China’s social liberalization. On the contrary, there is the strong possibility that, due to the increased public expression of Chinese nationalism associated with the Olympics, the continued evolution of domestic freedoms may be temporarily halted.
David S. G. Goodman is a professor of contemporary China studies at the University of Technology, Sydney.
DAVID C. KANG
Will the Beijing Olympics ultimately help the cause of freedom in China?
The short answer is no.
The longer answer is still no, but somewhat more encouraging. China is in the midst of a long-term economic, social, and political transformation. At the start of China’s opening 30 years ago, few could have foreseen its rapid economic growth, its increasingly globalized citizenry, its membership in international and regional institutions, and its often responsible behavior as a great power. Yet as far as China has come, there remain many areas in which Chinese rights do not meet international standards.
However, nobody has any idea whether or when China will become democratic, whether or when China’s economic and intellectual rights will match its GDP growth, or whether the CCP can “muddle through” for the next generation. The Chinese people themselves will decide this over time, and the choices made today will affect how and when the process unfolds.
Hosting such a global event throws a spotlight on China and makes it clear that China’s own interests are furthered by continuing domestic reforms.So what is the role of external influence on that process? The two main approaches to swaying another country’s internal affairs can be characterized as “cursing the darkness” and “lighting a candle.” Neither is likely to work by itself, but a combination of approaches to China is the strategy most likely to succeed.
To be sure, those hoping for a dramatic change in China will be disappointed, and it is hard to imagine external pressure (“cursing the darkness”) having an immediate effect. Realistically, barring fundamental change in the ruling Communist Party, political rights in China will be the slowest to improve. If America pressures China to reform, it is likely to sour relations between our two governments at a time when Sino-American cooperation is crucial to solving many environmental and strategic problems. It may also provoke a nationalist, anti-American backlash among the Chinese people.
“Lighting a candle”—that is, engaging China and making it clear that responsible behavior is in Beijing’s interests—may bring some benefits, but progress will be slow. The Beijing Olympics are one example of this approach: hosting such a global event throws a spotlight on China and makes it clear that China’s own interests are furthered by continuing domestic reforms. Yet the Olympics will merely be one more step in China’s long transformation, and the process will be gradual at best.
Ultimately, Chinese freedoms will arise when Chinese themselves, both inside and outside of the government, decide that the best way to govern themselves, their economy, and their society is through a model in which basic freedoms are expressly present. China is well along that path, and the role of the Olympics will be one small factor in its transformation.
David C. Kang is a professor of government and an adjunct professor at the Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College. His latest book is “China Rising: Peace, Power, and Order in East Asia” (Columbia University Press).
TARUN KHANNA
On a recent flight from Beijing to Los Angeles, I read the eloquent writings of Mandarin Yung Wing, a senior bureaucrat during the time of the Manchu regime in China and the first Chinese national to graduate from Yale University (class of 1854). His story is instructive in understanding how the Olympics might advance freedom in China, if at all.
Yung Wing was responsible for creating a pathway for Chinese students to study in the United States, for transferring U.S. machine-technology to China, and for promoting the rights of Chinese workers in the Western world. He was a successful human bridge between the West and China at a time of turbulence, including the U.S. Civil War and China’s Taiping Revolution.
His bridging was based on a deep understanding of both societies, and on finding helpful change agents in both China and the West. This meant “working within” both systems. That may sound like a euphemism for acquiescing to unsavory acts, but it is not, as Yung Wing amply demonstrated through his disavowal of corruption in graft-ridden Manchu China.
Of course, many bridges—both personal and institutional—have been constructed since then, most recently following the modern phase of Chinese reforms initiated around 1978, a process interrupted by the Tiananmen Square incident of 1989 but renewed by Deng Xiaoping’s 1992 “southern tour” (in Chinese, nanxun). Seen in this light, the 2008 Olympics offer another opportunity to continue China’s bridging to the world.
The Olympics offer another opportunity to continue China’s bridging to the world.With this progressive bridging have come freedoms of many sorts. Primary among these are freedoms from basic economic deprivation and hunger for hundreds of millions of Chinese. It is hard to overemphasize the importance of these freedoms. There is also much more information available than before, particularly regarding economic activity. For example, magazines such as Caijing, a leading business publication, would not have been feasible even a few years ago.
Of course, there are many freedoms that remain unrealized in China. There is little freedom to express religious beliefs—witness the tension between the party-approved Catholic Church and the underground one—and to debate politics.
During the Beijing Olympics, the government has promised limited press freedoms in return for restraint exercised by foreign journalists. But it is hard to let this press freedom genie out of the bottle only partially. The party must contend with a host of entities pursuing goals that are sometimes at odds with its own.
What do Yung Wing’s efforts tell us about outside attempts to promote freedom in China? Simple: outsiders desirous of spurring change are more likely to make progress if they figure out a way to leverage the system within China. As Yung Wing demonstrated, outside catalysts need to work with China’s domestic reformers. There is no compelling evidence that force majeure will produce the desired results—something we should keep in mind before, during, and after the Beijing Olympics.
Tarun Khanna is the Jorge Paulo Lemann professor at Harvard Business School and author of “Billions of Entrepreneurs: How China and India are Reshaping Their Futures and Yours” (Harvard Business School Press).
MINXIN PEI
The organizers of the 29th Summer Olympic Games in Beijing picked an auspicious date, 08/08/08, for the opening ceremony. In Cantonese, the number eight has the same sound as “making a fortune.” But it remains unclear whether the Beijing Olympics will be auspicious for the future of freedom in China. If history provides any guidance, it offers little encouragement.
Since the first modern Olympic Summer Games were held in Athens in 1896, the only authoritarian state that became democratic directly as a result of the Olympics was South Korea, which played host in 1988. Recent political developments within China do not augur well for an immediate expansion of political freedom. Although the average Chinese citizen enjoys more personal freedom today than he has during any period since the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949, essential political rights (such as dissent) and civil liberties (such as freedom of speech, association, and assembly) remain severely restricted.
With the Olympics approaching, the instinct of the Chinese government is not to relax political control but to strengthen its “stability-enhancing” capabilities and ensure that the Beijing Olympics will not be tarnished by unwelcome incidents of political protest or social unrest. As a result, urban slums, where thousands of petitioners from the rural provinces have temporary shelters, are being cleared. The Chinese media and the Internet are subject to more intense scrutiny. A leading AIDS activist, Hu Jia, has been sentenced to three years in prison.
It is understandable that the government would seek to provide security for the athletes and foreign visitors. But the unfortunate short-term effect of the Beijing Olympics has been to curtail Chinese freedoms, not to expand them.
The unfortunate short-term effect of the Olympics has been to curtail Chinese freedoms, not to expand them.This puts the West in a quandary. Since the Chinese people genuinely want to see Beijing stage the most successful Olympics in recent memory, it is unrealistic to expect them to respond positively to international criticisms of China’s poor human rights performance. In all likelihood, such criticisms will backfire, convincing the average Chinese that the West is unwilling to give China the international respect it deserves. Indeed, there is a real risk that the cause of freedom in China might suffer a further setback due to such a nationalist-populist backlash.
However, the long-term effects of the Beijing Olympics on freedom are likely to be more positive, although very limited. Massive investments in Beijing’s infrastructure will speed up its urbanization. The millions of peasants who subsequently migrate to Beijing will not only have access to a higher standard of living, they will also have greater opportunities to agitate for political rights. But it would be too generous to credit the Beijing Olympics even with this possible upside. Modernization, not the staging of international sports competitions, has long proven to be a far more potent force for expanding freedom around the world.
Minxin Pei is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and author of “China’s Trapped Transition” (Harvard University Press).
ROSS TERRILL
The Beijing Games will display China, not change it. The world will see a booming urban China that has temporarily separated economic freedom (which is permitted) and political freedom (which is denied), thus creating a hybrid system of liberalized commercial life coexisting with authoritarian politics. During the Games, the Chinese regime will do what it takes to put on a good show.
In the short term, freedom will shrink for those Chinese who are always on the threshold of repression. These include handicapped people, migrants from the countryside, AIDS activists, pro-democracy figures, bloggers who show a tendency to make “anti-China” statements, and others who mar China’s “harmonious society.” Over the long term, however, there may be a slight gain in freedom’s prospects, as sometimes occurs when the Chinese party-state has to rub shoulders with non-authoritarians.
Today, Chinese nationalism is burnished by economic progress, the space program, archaeological research to demonstrate how old and clever Chinese civilization is, and Japan bashing. The Olympic Games will add a little to this mix, if everything goes smoothly.
To be sure, hosting the Games is politically risky, as it means bringing international elements into China. Something could happen. But then, something could happen to China’s brittle political system at any time: for example, if disgruntled farmers mobilized; if Tibet or the Muslim area of Xinjiang grew restive (witness the recent protests by Tibetans in Lhasa and elsewhere); if Hong Kong tangled with Beijing; or if a regime collapse in North Korea brought millions of refugees flocking into northeast China.
Freedom can’t advance far under the present party-state. Beijing has learned how to turn the screws on and off according to circumstance. But a secular movement away from communism is gaining strength in China, and the Olympic Games may mildly help it.
The party-state will win some rounds with its organizational and theatrical skills. Beijing will look clean, bright, and exciting. If the Asian Games of two decades ago are any indication, the opening and closing ceremonies mounted by Beijing will be of the highest standard.
If there are massive international protests against the Games, most Chinese will rally behind their government.Other elements of the show will strike informed observers as bittersweet. Few Americans will guess that the tap water in their five-star hotels is unavailable to the vast majority of Beijing residents. Most of the city’s tap water is not safe to drink. Only in the area housing athletes and some foreign visitors—and only during the Games—will drinkable water flow from faucets. Providing safe water for an Olympic elite and dirty water for the Chinese masses does not exactly boost the credentials of socialism.
Politicizing the Games would not have a good outcome. It would not free any Chinese political prisoners, nor would it make China’s foreign policy in the Third World more pro-democracy.
If there are massive international protests against the Beijing Games, most Chinese will rally behind their government.
Yes, the Olympics are a tool in the authoritarian state’s box of tricks. But a successful Olympics will be China’s glory more than the government’s. The government will sweat, repress, and spend billions. But the Chinese people will feel proud, and why shouldn’t they?
The Olympic Games are ultimately a sporting event. Unfortunately, they can’t be a 100 percent sporting event because authoritarian governments use the occasion for boasting. We may grimace at this, but we must stick by our principles. The United States did not need to trumpet the 1984 Los Angeles Games to fortify its political legitimacy. If other countries use the Olympic Games as a crutch, so be it. I think the world will get the message: free governments are relaxed, but repressive regimes are always fearful.
Ross Terrill’s books include “Mao” (Stanford University Press) and “The New Chinese Empire” (Basic Books). He was recently a scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
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By THE AMERICAN
From the May/June 2008 Issue
Filed under: World Watch
Will the Beijing Olympics ultimately help or hurt the cause of freedom in China? THE AMERICAN asked eight experts.
From August 8 to August 24, China’s capital city will host the 29th Summer Olympics. It promises to be as much a political event as an athletic spectacle. With that in mind, THE AMERICAN asked eight China experts to answer this question: Will the Beijing Olympics ultimately help or hurt the cause of freedom in China? Here are their responses.
DAN BLUMENTHAL
During the 2008 Summer Olympics, 600,000 armband-wearing citizen volunteers will join 90,000 police, military, and paramilitary forces in Beijing, flush with hundreds of millions of dollars to spend on security technology to help enforce the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) writ. No one should be under any illusion that the Olympics will pry China open. On the contrary, the party’s repressive techniques will grow stronger thanks to Western technology and training. The requirements for security technology in Beijing are large, and Western companies are rushing in to meet them. Some American companies are installing surveillance systems, while others are providing networks of security cameras.
As the former head of criminal intelligence for Hong Kong puts it, “They are certainly getting the best stuff.” The “best stuff” is similar to the technology that was supposed to liberalize China throughout the 1990s. It didn’t. Instead, Internet and telecommunications technology was put to work by the Communist regime against its citizens. The news that grabs headlines—for example, when Western companies provide Chinese authorities with the IP addresses of known dissidents—tells just part of the story of a Chinese security apparatus that has grown stronger through international commerce. Even before the Olympics, tens of thousands of Internet police monitored antiparty activities each day. During and after the Olympics, this number will certainly grow.
The Olympics will not pry China open. The Communist Party’s repressive techniques will grow stronger thanks to Western technology and training.After the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, many foreign experts predicted that the days of one-party rule were numbered. But that was 20 years ago, and the CCP is still very much in power. True, it survives thanks to impressive economic growth. But no less important is the CCP’s acquisition of sophisticated and modern technology to squelch dissent. The party simply has more resources to employ against those trying to use new technologies to push for a more open China.
In other words, by deepening trade with China, in particular technology trade, the West threw the CCP a lifeline. Although the “Tiananmen Sanctions” were meant to prohibit the sale of goods and services that would improve the repressive means of the state, there is simply no way for companies to ensure that technologies sold for commercial purposes are not diverted to police or security use. The Olympics have further opened the spigots.
All countries, including China, have legitimate concerns about terrorist threats during the Olympics. The problem is that the CCP’s definition of “terrorist” includes Tibetans and Uighurs agitating for greater religious and cultural freedom. Indeed, as Liu Shaowu, a senior Chinese official in charge of Olympic security, has stated, the CCP has set its sights on anyone taking part in any protest. Even democratic countries err on the side of more centralized power when faced with potential threats. But China is not a democratic country: there are no checks on power, and there is no recourse for a citizen whose rights are abused. The ruling elite uses legitimate security concerns as excuses to become even more dictatorial.
With foreign journalists pouring into China during the Olympics, there will surely be protests against the CCP. But if the 1990s are any lesson, the Chinese Communists will emerge stronger, prouder, and more sophisticated in their repressive techniques, and they will be armed with the finest Western technologies to crush dissent well past the Olympics.
Dan Blumenthal is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
JACQUES DELISLE
The Olympics are likely to have a modestly positive impact on freedom, civil and political rights, and kindred values in China. This unexciting prospect is more plausible than predictions that Beijing 2008 will bring a reprise of the 1988 Seoul Games (sometimes credited with expediting South Korea’s democratization) or the 1980 Moscow Games (sometimes interpreted as hastening Gorbachev’s reforms, and thus the demise of Soviet Communism). Marginal change is also more likely than the bleak vision of a Beijing Olympiad reminiscent of the 1936 Berlin Games, which handed an odious host regime a propaganda coup.
Having led China through meteoric economic growth and rapid ascension as a regional and aspiring great power, the reform-era Chinese regime is far more resilient than its counterparts in South Korea and the Soviet Union were during the 1980s. Also, China remains below the level of affluence and related social changes that presaged democratization in South Korea and other East Asian countries. On the other hand, and despite heavy investment in Games-related security and the suppression of Games-linked dissent, China has come a long way from its Maoist past. It has engaged the outside world’s norms and institutions, introducing freedoms and openness that would have been unimaginable under Mao.
To be sure, the run-up to the Olympics has included much that is bad for freedom and human rights. The regime has used poorly paid and mistreated migrant workers to build Olympics-related projects; it has ousted urban residents to make room for that construction; it has quashed many protesters (including those calling for Tibetan autonomy, religious freedom, freedom of the press, property rights, and labor rights); and it has scolded, without apparent irony, its critics for “politicizing” the Games.
If the Games present China as a powerful and capable state, this will increase expectations that China live up to international human rights standards.Still, the net effect of the Olympics is likely to be favorable. If the Games go smoothly, this should boost Chinese rulers’ confidence that the liberalizing influences the Olympics foster do not threaten their political order. If the Games present China as a powerful and capable state, this also will increase expectations that China live up to international human rights standards. If the regime does not respond, Beijing will find it harder to persuade the world that China’s rise will be “peaceful” and “harmonious.”
If the Games show the regime’s repressive face—especially if there are telegenic moments akin to the lone man standing before the tanks in Tiananmen Square or a military vehicle toppling the “Goddess of Democracy”—then post-Olympics China will have a more difficult time achieving the international recognition and rehabilitation the Games were supposed to provide, as they variously did for South Korea in 1988, Germany in 1972, and Japan in 1964. More broadly, the Olympics likely will increase China’s openness to international ideas and foreigners’ monitoring of its human rights record. While global attention to China will wane, it is unlikely to recede to pre-Olympics levels. At least in the long run the Beijing Games promise to be another small step in China’s long march toward greater global engagement and political transparency.
Jacques deLisle is the Stephen A. Cozen Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania and director of the Asia Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.
JAMES A. DORN
Will the Beijing Olympics ultimately help or hurt the cause of freedom in China? Once one realizes that any expansion of trade—in goods, sports, ideas, or capital—widens the range of individual choice, the answer to this question is obvious. The Olympic Games will link China more closely to the free world, and the millions of people who view the Games will see firsthand the progress China has made since it opened to the outside world 30 years ago.
But the world will also hear the cries of demonstrators who rightly recognize the repression of human rights in China. Those protests, however, should not shut down the Games and deny Chinese and other athletes the opportunity to pursue their dreams of winning Olympic gold.
China has come a long way since Mao Zedong made capitalism a crime and abolished private property, but the CCP has yet to accept the basic principle of freedom. Today, Chinese people are allowed to own their own homes and are free to start their own businesses, to work in the nonstate sector, and to travel and trade.
The Olympics will allow the Chinese to take pride in their progress and to show the rest of the world that China is a peaceful rising power, not an inevitable enemy of the West.But the state continues to deny people freedom of expression and to maintain its monopoly on political power. Nonetheless, one should not lose sight of the positive impact of economic liberalization. As Jianying Zha, author of China Pop, has noted, “The economic reforms have created new opportunities, new dreams, and to some extent, a new atmosphere and new mindsets…. There is a growing sense of increased space for personal freedom.”
In March 2004, the National People’s Congress (NPC) amended the official Chinese constitution, which now proclaims, “The lawful private property of citizens is inviolable.” And in 2007, the NPC passed a landmark property law to better protect ownership rights. Such legal changes would have been unthinkable during Mao’s reign.
In 1978, China’s foreign trade sector barely existed and was dominated by a handful of state trading companies. Today, the foreign trade sector is open to virtually anyone, and China is the world’s third-largest trading nation. The transition from central planning to a “socialist market economy” has allowed millions of people to escape from poverty and has increased the demand for safeguarding newly acquired property.
The Beijing Olympics will allow the Chinese people to take pride in the progress they have made and to show the rest of the world that China is a peaceful rising power, not an inevitable enemy of the West. “Peaceful development” has been the mantra of China’s leaders since 1978. Their primary goal has been economic development. Treating China like Cuba or North Korea would be counterproductive.
We should recognize the progress China has made and hope for a peaceful and prosperous China. However, we should not confuse market socialism with market liberalism. More importantly, we should remind the Chinese leadership that official proclamations of human rights must be backed up with institutions that limit the power of government and allow people freedom under a just rule of law.
Brave protesters are reminding the world of what still needs to be done in the cause of Chinese freedom. Their voices should not be shut out in the quest for Olympic gold.
James A. Dorn is a China specialist at the Cato Institute and editor of The Cato Journal.
DAVID S. G. GOODMAN
There is considerably more freedom in China today than there was at the height of the Mao era in the early 1970s. Economically, politically, and socially, the degree of personal freedom has continued to increase since the early 1980s, even though change has sometimes been fitful. It is hard to see how the 2008 Olympics can have anything other than a slight impact on the pattern of developing freedom.
The increase in economic freedom has been the most dramatic change in China during the last three decades: for entrepreneurs, managers, and peasants. We have seen the emergence of an entrepreneurial class that has sped up the pace of growth and change. In a very real sense, economic freedom has made it possible for Beijing to host the Olympics, both by integrating China into the world economy and by providing the party-state with the resources to finance the event. If the unveiling of the new buildings and infrastructure associated with the Olympics is a reliable guide, the Games will showcase the achievements of economic liberalization.
It is unlikely that the Games will expedite China’s social liberalization. In fact, the continued evolution of domestic freedoms may be temporarily halted.Many foreign observers have expected China’s integration into the world economy and its economic development to lead almost automatically to increased political freedom. There have indeed been some gains. Independent political space has expanded, albeit slowly, which has made room for a range of new institutions, including chambers of commerce, nongovernmental organizations, and even loosely defined “activist” groups. All the same, more dramatic political change is unlikely absent a major reform movement within the CCP, a state crisis, and widespread unrest. And in any case, the Olympic Games are not likely to affect this trajectory.
Socially, Chinese people have won many new freedoms. For example, it has become much easier to move around China in search of work or leisure. Employment opportunities are more market-driven than ever before. The standard of living has improved dramatically for most people, providing them with greater opportunities for personal expression. Cultural activities and artistic expression have started to flourish, with the aid of greater private funding.
At the same time, there is little doubt that social customs and China’s entrenched inequalities of class, sex, and region have been slower to change. For that matter, it is unlikely that the Summer Games will expedite China’s social liberalization. On the contrary, there is the strong possibility that, due to the increased public expression of Chinese nationalism associated with the Olympics, the continued evolution of domestic freedoms may be temporarily halted.
David S. G. Goodman is a professor of contemporary China studies at the University of Technology, Sydney.
DAVID C. KANG
Will the Beijing Olympics ultimately help the cause of freedom in China?
The short answer is no.
The longer answer is still no, but somewhat more encouraging. China is in the midst of a long-term economic, social, and political transformation. At the start of China’s opening 30 years ago, few could have foreseen its rapid economic growth, its increasingly globalized citizenry, its membership in international and regional institutions, and its often responsible behavior as a great power. Yet as far as China has come, there remain many areas in which Chinese rights do not meet international standards.
However, nobody has any idea whether or when China will become democratic, whether or when China’s economic and intellectual rights will match its GDP growth, or whether the CCP can “muddle through” for the next generation. The Chinese people themselves will decide this over time, and the choices made today will affect how and when the process unfolds.
Hosting such a global event throws a spotlight on China and makes it clear that China’s own interests are furthered by continuing domestic reforms.So what is the role of external influence on that process? The two main approaches to swaying another country’s internal affairs can be characterized as “cursing the darkness” and “lighting a candle.” Neither is likely to work by itself, but a combination of approaches to China is the strategy most likely to succeed.
To be sure, those hoping for a dramatic change in China will be disappointed, and it is hard to imagine external pressure (“cursing the darkness”) having an immediate effect. Realistically, barring fundamental change in the ruling Communist Party, political rights in China will be the slowest to improve. If America pressures China to reform, it is likely to sour relations between our two governments at a time when Sino-American cooperation is crucial to solving many environmental and strategic problems. It may also provoke a nationalist, anti-American backlash among the Chinese people.
“Lighting a candle”—that is, engaging China and making it clear that responsible behavior is in Beijing’s interests—may bring some benefits, but progress will be slow. The Beijing Olympics are one example of this approach: hosting such a global event throws a spotlight on China and makes it clear that China’s own interests are furthered by continuing domestic reforms. Yet the Olympics will merely be one more step in China’s long transformation, and the process will be gradual at best.
Ultimately, Chinese freedoms will arise when Chinese themselves, both inside and outside of the government, decide that the best way to govern themselves, their economy, and their society is through a model in which basic freedoms are expressly present. China is well along that path, and the role of the Olympics will be one small factor in its transformation.
David C. Kang is a professor of government and an adjunct professor at the Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College. His latest book is “China Rising: Peace, Power, and Order in East Asia” (Columbia University Press).
TARUN KHANNA
On a recent flight from Beijing to Los Angeles, I read the eloquent writings of Mandarin Yung Wing, a senior bureaucrat during the time of the Manchu regime in China and the first Chinese national to graduate from Yale University (class of 1854). His story is instructive in understanding how the Olympics might advance freedom in China, if at all.
Yung Wing was responsible for creating a pathway for Chinese students to study in the United States, for transferring U.S. machine-technology to China, and for promoting the rights of Chinese workers in the Western world. He was a successful human bridge between the West and China at a time of turbulence, including the U.S. Civil War and China’s Taiping Revolution.
His bridging was based on a deep understanding of both societies, and on finding helpful change agents in both China and the West. This meant “working within” both systems. That may sound like a euphemism for acquiescing to unsavory acts, but it is not, as Yung Wing amply demonstrated through his disavowal of corruption in graft-ridden Manchu China.
Of course, many bridges—both personal and institutional—have been constructed since then, most recently following the modern phase of Chinese reforms initiated around 1978, a process interrupted by the Tiananmen Square incident of 1989 but renewed by Deng Xiaoping’s 1992 “southern tour” (in Chinese, nanxun). Seen in this light, the 2008 Olympics offer another opportunity to continue China’s bridging to the world.
The Olympics offer another opportunity to continue China’s bridging to the world.With this progressive bridging have come freedoms of many sorts. Primary among these are freedoms from basic economic deprivation and hunger for hundreds of millions of Chinese. It is hard to overemphasize the importance of these freedoms. There is also much more information available than before, particularly regarding economic activity. For example, magazines such as Caijing, a leading business publication, would not have been feasible even a few years ago.
Of course, there are many freedoms that remain unrealized in China. There is little freedom to express religious beliefs—witness the tension between the party-approved Catholic Church and the underground one—and to debate politics.
During the Beijing Olympics, the government has promised limited press freedoms in return for restraint exercised by foreign journalists. But it is hard to let this press freedom genie out of the bottle only partially. The party must contend with a host of entities pursuing goals that are sometimes at odds with its own.
What do Yung Wing’s efforts tell us about outside attempts to promote freedom in China? Simple: outsiders desirous of spurring change are more likely to make progress if they figure out a way to leverage the system within China. As Yung Wing demonstrated, outside catalysts need to work with China’s domestic reformers. There is no compelling evidence that force majeure will produce the desired results—something we should keep in mind before, during, and after the Beijing Olympics.
Tarun Khanna is the Jorge Paulo Lemann professor at Harvard Business School and author of “Billions of Entrepreneurs: How China and India are Reshaping Their Futures and Yours” (Harvard Business School Press).
MINXIN PEI
The organizers of the 29th Summer Olympic Games in Beijing picked an auspicious date, 08/08/08, for the opening ceremony. In Cantonese, the number eight has the same sound as “making a fortune.” But it remains unclear whether the Beijing Olympics will be auspicious for the future of freedom in China. If history provides any guidance, it offers little encouragement.
Since the first modern Olympic Summer Games were held in Athens in 1896, the only authoritarian state that became democratic directly as a result of the Olympics was South Korea, which played host in 1988. Recent political developments within China do not augur well for an immediate expansion of political freedom. Although the average Chinese citizen enjoys more personal freedom today than he has during any period since the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949, essential political rights (such as dissent) and civil liberties (such as freedom of speech, association, and assembly) remain severely restricted.
With the Olympics approaching, the instinct of the Chinese government is not to relax political control but to strengthen its “stability-enhancing” capabilities and ensure that the Beijing Olympics will not be tarnished by unwelcome incidents of political protest or social unrest. As a result, urban slums, where thousands of petitioners from the rural provinces have temporary shelters, are being cleared. The Chinese media and the Internet are subject to more intense scrutiny. A leading AIDS activist, Hu Jia, has been sentenced to three years in prison.
It is understandable that the government would seek to provide security for the athletes and foreign visitors. But the unfortunate short-term effect of the Beijing Olympics has been to curtail Chinese freedoms, not to expand them.
The unfortunate short-term effect of the Olympics has been to curtail Chinese freedoms, not to expand them.This puts the West in a quandary. Since the Chinese people genuinely want to see Beijing stage the most successful Olympics in recent memory, it is unrealistic to expect them to respond positively to international criticisms of China’s poor human rights performance. In all likelihood, such criticisms will backfire, convincing the average Chinese that the West is unwilling to give China the international respect it deserves. Indeed, there is a real risk that the cause of freedom in China might suffer a further setback due to such a nationalist-populist backlash.
However, the long-term effects of the Beijing Olympics on freedom are likely to be more positive, although very limited. Massive investments in Beijing’s infrastructure will speed up its urbanization. The millions of peasants who subsequently migrate to Beijing will not only have access to a higher standard of living, they will also have greater opportunities to agitate for political rights. But it would be too generous to credit the Beijing Olympics even with this possible upside. Modernization, not the staging of international sports competitions, has long proven to be a far more potent force for expanding freedom around the world.
Minxin Pei is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and author of “China’s Trapped Transition” (Harvard University Press).
ROSS TERRILL
The Beijing Games will display China, not change it. The world will see a booming urban China that has temporarily separated economic freedom (which is permitted) and political freedom (which is denied), thus creating a hybrid system of liberalized commercial life coexisting with authoritarian politics. During the Games, the Chinese regime will do what it takes to put on a good show.
In the short term, freedom will shrink for those Chinese who are always on the threshold of repression. These include handicapped people, migrants from the countryside, AIDS activists, pro-democracy figures, bloggers who show a tendency to make “anti-China” statements, and others who mar China’s “harmonious society.” Over the long term, however, there may be a slight gain in freedom’s prospects, as sometimes occurs when the Chinese party-state has to rub shoulders with non-authoritarians.
Today, Chinese nationalism is burnished by economic progress, the space program, archaeological research to demonstrate how old and clever Chinese civilization is, and Japan bashing. The Olympic Games will add a little to this mix, if everything goes smoothly.
To be sure, hosting the Games is politically risky, as it means bringing international elements into China. Something could happen. But then, something could happen to China’s brittle political system at any time: for example, if disgruntled farmers mobilized; if Tibet or the Muslim area of Xinjiang grew restive (witness the recent protests by Tibetans in Lhasa and elsewhere); if Hong Kong tangled with Beijing; or if a regime collapse in North Korea brought millions of refugees flocking into northeast China.
Freedom can’t advance far under the present party-state. Beijing has learned how to turn the screws on and off according to circumstance. But a secular movement away from communism is gaining strength in China, and the Olympic Games may mildly help it.
The party-state will win some rounds with its organizational and theatrical skills. Beijing will look clean, bright, and exciting. If the Asian Games of two decades ago are any indication, the opening and closing ceremonies mounted by Beijing will be of the highest standard.
If there are massive international protests against the Games, most Chinese will rally behind their government.Other elements of the show will strike informed observers as bittersweet. Few Americans will guess that the tap water in their five-star hotels is unavailable to the vast majority of Beijing residents. Most of the city’s tap water is not safe to drink. Only in the area housing athletes and some foreign visitors—and only during the Games—will drinkable water flow from faucets. Providing safe water for an Olympic elite and dirty water for the Chinese masses does not exactly boost the credentials of socialism.
Politicizing the Games would not have a good outcome. It would not free any Chinese political prisoners, nor would it make China’s foreign policy in the Third World more pro-democracy.
If there are massive international protests against the Beijing Games, most Chinese will rally behind their government.
Yes, the Olympics are a tool in the authoritarian state’s box of tricks. But a successful Olympics will be China’s glory more than the government’s. The government will sweat, repress, and spend billions. But the Chinese people will feel proud, and why shouldn’t they?
The Olympic Games are ultimately a sporting event. Unfortunately, they can’t be a 100 percent sporting event because authoritarian governments use the occasion for boasting. We may grimace at this, but we must stick by our principles. The United States did not need to trumpet the 1984 Los Angeles Games to fortify its political legitimacy. If other countries use the Olympic Games as a crutch, so be it. I think the world will get the message: free governments are relaxed, but repressive regimes are always fearful.
Ross Terrill’s books include “Mao” (Stanford University Press) and “The New Chinese Empire” (Basic Books). He was recently a scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
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[+/-] : Athletes should consider Beijing boycott
Athletes should consider Beijing boycott: Stojko
The Canadian Press
TORONTO — Two-time Olympic silver medallist Elvis Stojko says Canadian athletes should "make a stand" for human rights and think twice about heading to the Beijing Summer Games.
Stojko, who captured the silver in men's figure-skating at the 1994 and 1998 Winter Olympics, says he would consider boycotting the Games if he was still competing.
Stojko made the comments during a Saturday afternoon rally outside the Ontario legislature, protesting China's human rights record.
About 200 people showed up for the rally, which included lighting a mock Olympic torch.
The three-time world champion also says it's unacceptable for countries to muzzle athletes' opinions, since the athletes are the ones representing their countries.
China's government has faced mounting criticism over its human rights record, and drew fire for a recent crackdown against anti-government protests in Tibet.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper has confirmed he will not attend the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Games, but Canada has rejected the idea of boycotting the Olympics.
"I know for me, it would be extremely difficult to be able to go compete in a country that was hosting the Games, but don't exemplify what the Games are being held for,'' Stojko told The Canadian Press.
He added that athletes have an ability to raise awareness about important issues.
"People should know what's going on and athletes have a chance to be able to do that if they wish,'' Stojko said, adding that China's treatment of its people is dragging "negative energy'' into the world tournament.
But Steve Keogh, communications manager from the Canadian Olympic Committee, said athletes are free to say what they want,'' he said in an interview. "There's been no instruction to our athletes not to say anything.
"They can say anything they wish.''
Keogh did say Canada is a signatory of the Olympic charter, which prohibits athletes from making any "proactive demonstration while in an Olympic venue.''
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The Canadian Press
TORONTO — Two-time Olympic silver medallist Elvis Stojko says Canadian athletes should "make a stand" for human rights and think twice about heading to the Beijing Summer Games.
Stojko, who captured the silver in men's figure-skating at the 1994 and 1998 Winter Olympics, says he would consider boycotting the Games if he was still competing.
Stojko made the comments during a Saturday afternoon rally outside the Ontario legislature, protesting China's human rights record.
About 200 people showed up for the rally, which included lighting a mock Olympic torch.
The three-time world champion also says it's unacceptable for countries to muzzle athletes' opinions, since the athletes are the ones representing their countries.
China's government has faced mounting criticism over its human rights record, and drew fire for a recent crackdown against anti-government protests in Tibet.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper has confirmed he will not attend the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Games, but Canada has rejected the idea of boycotting the Olympics.
"I know for me, it would be extremely difficult to be able to go compete in a country that was hosting the Games, but don't exemplify what the Games are being held for,'' Stojko told The Canadian Press.
He added that athletes have an ability to raise awareness about important issues.
"People should know what's going on and athletes have a chance to be able to do that if they wish,'' Stojko said, adding that China's treatment of its people is dragging "negative energy'' into the world tournament.
But Steve Keogh, communications manager from the Canadian Olympic Committee, said athletes are free to say what they want,'' he said in an interview. "There's been no instruction to our athletes not to say anything.
"They can say anything they wish.''
Keogh did say Canada is a signatory of the Olympic charter, which prohibits athletes from making any "proactive demonstration while in an Olympic venue.''
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Thursday, May 15, 2008
[+/-] : Torchbearers donate $ to earthquake: Torch Relay is a Farce
CCTV reported Olympic torchbearers donate money to Sichuan earthquake.
Watching at near half point of video and look at the torchbearers hands, they did not put any money, their hands are empty, as they pretended donate money.
The Torch Relay is a farce. CCP's made Olympic a political and propaganda tool. CCP Shows off Communist ideology and economic, but hiding oppression in Tibet, torture, kill, imprison Tibetan, and illegal evicted Beijing resident for building stadiums upcoming Olympic. China violated more human rights contrary to its promised.
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[+/-] : Activists carry torch to protest human-rights violations in China
Activists carry torch to protest human-rights violations in China
by Christa Hillstrom May 14, 2008
Like the games in Germany in 1936, and in the Soviet Union in 1980, this year’s Beijing Olympics will go down in history as a gross corruption of the Olympic spirit, said Chen Kai, former member of China’s national basketball team.
Kai, now a U.S. citizen, is part of an international movement called the Human Rights Torch Relay that is spreading this message across 37 countries on five continents, including more than 36 U.S. cities.
Chicago is one of those cities. More than 100 people gathered in Lincoln Park on Saturday to support the torch’s Chicago run— a 2 kilometer symbolic walk around the pond.
The relay is intended to raise awareness about human rights violations in China, such as the persecution of the religious group, Falun Gong.
Eleven speakers offered their support, including Mayor Jim Burke of Dixon, a representative of U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Chicago), and students and activists.
"This torch is hugely significant because it symbolizes our united stance in a worldwide effort to raise awareness about not only the human rights abuses of the Chinese Communist Party, but also the ongoing persecutions of people under corrupt regimes in the countries of Myanmar, North Korea, Zimbabwe, Darfur and wherever unjust practices are being inflicted upon humankind," said Dorothy Brown, Cook County circuit clerk, in a statement read by her representative, Jalyne Strong.
The goals of the relay, organizers said, are to create a platform to speak about injustices perpetrated by the Chinese government.
Sharon Kilarski, spokeswoman for the Relay, said the running of the torch uses global attention on the Olympics to spotlight these injustices, but is not anti-China and does not promote a boycott of the Olympics.
Using the games to promote an image of China that ignores human-rights issues is deceitful, said Kai.
“China has already become ... a cheap prostitute using Olympics as makeup to hide and disguise itself, and now it wants to make love to the world,” he said.
He added that he has hope for his homeland’s future, comparing his own dream of Chinese freedom and unity to that of one of his adopted nation’s heroes, Martin Luther King Jr.
“I dream that one day the Chinese people will free themselves,” he said.
Other “human rights torches” were simultaneously run in Detroit and Evansville, Ind. Saturday, and the next stops on the international tour include cities in Canada and Asia.
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[+/-] : Boycott as the only effective form of protest
Boycott as the only effective form of protest
Posted By Beth Gandy On May 13, 2008
Beth Gandy talks to the Vice President of the European Parliament on Olympic boycott and human rights abuses China
While the Olympic Torch, the manifestation of the Olympic spirit, continues its tour around the world, April 30 marked 100 days until the start of the Games in Beijing.
However many deem China responsible for genocide in Darfur and Tibet and some vehemently uphold that it is in Tibet that the Olympic spirit died. For these reasons, should a boycott of this year’s event in China take place?
Many in the European Parliament stand by this including its Vice-President, Edward McMillan-Scott, the Conservative MEP for the Yorkshire and Humber region. He created the European Democracy Initiative in 2004 and has been actively campaigning for a debate about the prospect of a boycott.
When interviewed by Nouse he shed some light on the situation. “As the founder of the EU’s £100m democracy and human rights programme, I have tried to gauge the capacity to work in the world’s largest country and its biggest tyranny. There is a universal acknowledgement in the human rights community that the situation in China is already worse than it was in 2001 when it was awarded the games by a hopeful IOC (International Olympic Committee).”
Along with organisations such as Amnesty International, McMillan-Scott believes human rights abuse in China is actually worsening as a consequence of the Olympics. In being asked by the IOC to organise “a secure Olympics Games”, the Chinese government has resorted to more arrests of dissidents and more censorship.
The Games have in the past been used to bring estranged countries together. At the Sydney Olympics in 2000, North and South Korea entered the same stadium together during the opening ceremony for the first time, two countries that consistently antagonise each other at the negotiating table. The South Koreans, in the end, used the Olympics as a coming-out event, as it is hoped China will, and it is now a democracy.
It is thought that the Olympics will give the country exposure to the world, to different ideals will hopefully bring about change. As McMillan-Scott said: “thanks to the boycott campaign, the world is watching China.”
He went on to scrutinise Chinese politics saying that “the techniques of repression in the name of the Chinese Communist Party are so effective with their PR company teaching 84 key Beijing spokesmen how to lie about them. China is selling the same techniques to other tyrannies around the world, from Burma to Sudan to Zimbabwe”.
Politicians worldwide will now face a decision over whether to lend legitimacy to a regime with a terrible human rights record, which continues to oppress people and silence those who oppose it. Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, has vowed to boycott the opening ceremony. Hilary Clinton also recently took to the stand in her election plight, urging George Bush’s administration to reconsider its Olympic plans. France’s President Sarkozy has not ruled out a boycott, and while Gordon Brown has said he will go to the closing ceremony of the Games, it is likely that in private he is uncertain about his position.
McMillan-Scott takes a powerful stand supporting the boycott saying: “It is time for the democratic world to stand up and be counted”.
Article printed from Nouse.co.uk: http://www.nouse.co.uk
URL to article: http://www.nouse.co.uk/2008/05/13/boycott-as-the-only-effective-form-of-protest/
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Wednesday, May 14, 2008
[+/-] : Internationally Exhibited Hawaii Artist Cancels 'Goodwill Tour' to China
Internationally Exhibited Hawaii Artist Cancels 'Goodwill Tour' to China
Written by associate1 Wednesday, 14 May 2008
'Goodwill Tour' to China as the wave of worldwide protests continue to haunt the upcoming Olympics. The Artist calls for a Boycott of the Olympics, Boycott of travel to China and other countries that suppress freedom and human rights.
HI, United States, May 6, 2008 -- With the ever growing international discontent over China's Human Rights Violations of Tibetans, Ughers, Chi Gung practitioners, and other minorities, Hawaii Artist Aelbert Aehegma has announced the cancellation of his non-political, 'Goodwill Tour' to China as the wave of worldwide protests continue to haunt the upcoming Olympics. The Artist calls for a Boycott of the Olympics, Boycott of travel to China and other countries that suppress freedom and human rights, and personal limiting of purchase of goods and services from repressive regimes worldwide. Mr. Aehegma states that the Chinese Government interfered with the 'Goodwill Tour,' by completely limiting communication with his sponsor, a Chinese doctor he met as Artist-in-Residence at the Hilton Waikoloa Village Resort on the Big Island of Hawaii.
The Artist's Cultural Tour was to include outdoor mural paintings of famous Chinese landscapes, meetings with artists, dignitaries, and children, video documentation, and a special series of Olympic sports paintings; along with the cancellation, the Artist will not be donating a proposed mural to the Beijing Museum. His works have been exhibited in over a dozen countries. As well, 'Our Renaissance: The Next Enlightenment,' was chosen to be sent aboard the space shuttle to the MIR Space Station for 'Ars Ad Astra', the 'First Art Show in Space' as an international, goodwill venture. President George W. Bush owns the First Artist Proof of a Commemorative 9-11 Art Giclee Print entitled 'Enduring Freedom,' by Mr. Aehegma which features the masonic symbols of America and depicts Miss Liberty riding on an American Eagle.
Although Mr. Aehegma's post-impressionist landscapes are greatly influenced by Chinese landscape painting, he states, ' Celebrating the qualities of a nation's past culture and its golden ages is all well and good; however, good world citizens should not just be just cultural consumers. Continuing, he states, that,"modern, worldwide media challenges us to be more humane, and compassionate for the whole human family. One by one we must rally against repressive regimes that crush 'Freedom', and continue human rights violations not only in China but across the globe." Finally he feels that sustainable international programs must be urgently implemented, family to family, community to community in environmentally and humane balance to put off rapidly increasing, catastrophic human suffering."
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Written by associate1 Wednesday, 14 May 2008
'Goodwill Tour' to China as the wave of worldwide protests continue to haunt the upcoming Olympics. The Artist calls for a Boycott of the Olympics, Boycott of travel to China and other countries that suppress freedom and human rights.
HI, United States, May 6, 2008 -- With the ever growing international discontent over China's Human Rights Violations of Tibetans, Ughers, Chi Gung practitioners, and other minorities, Hawaii Artist Aelbert Aehegma has announced the cancellation of his non-political, 'Goodwill Tour' to China as the wave of worldwide protests continue to haunt the upcoming Olympics. The Artist calls for a Boycott of the Olympics, Boycott of travel to China and other countries that suppress freedom and human rights, and personal limiting of purchase of goods and services from repressive regimes worldwide. Mr. Aehegma states that the Chinese Government interfered with the 'Goodwill Tour,' by completely limiting communication with his sponsor, a Chinese doctor he met as Artist-in-Residence at the Hilton Waikoloa Village Resort on the Big Island of Hawaii.
The Artist's Cultural Tour was to include outdoor mural paintings of famous Chinese landscapes, meetings with artists, dignitaries, and children, video documentation, and a special series of Olympic sports paintings; along with the cancellation, the Artist will not be donating a proposed mural to the Beijing Museum. His works have been exhibited in over a dozen countries. As well, 'Our Renaissance: The Next Enlightenment,' was chosen to be sent aboard the space shuttle to the MIR Space Station for 'Ars Ad Astra', the 'First Art Show in Space' as an international, goodwill venture. President George W. Bush owns the First Artist Proof of a Commemorative 9-11 Art Giclee Print entitled 'Enduring Freedom,' by Mr. Aehegma which features the masonic symbols of America and depicts Miss Liberty riding on an American Eagle.
Although Mr. Aehegma's post-impressionist landscapes are greatly influenced by Chinese landscape painting, he states, ' Celebrating the qualities of a nation's past culture and its golden ages is all well and good; however, good world citizens should not just be just cultural consumers. Continuing, he states, that,"modern, worldwide media challenges us to be more humane, and compassionate for the whole human family. One by one we must rally against repressive regimes that crush 'Freedom', and continue human rights violations not only in China but across the globe." Finally he feels that sustainable international programs must be urgently implemented, family to family, community to community in environmentally and humane balance to put off rapidly increasing, catastrophic human suffering."
Press Release Distribution By PressReleasePoint
Contact:
Aelbert Aehegma
kealakekua, HI 96750
United States
pacifictalent@yahoo.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
http://www.pressreleasepoint.com/node/20058/
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[+/-] : On Boycotting the Beijing Olympics
On Boycotting the Beijing Olympics
Eric Reeves | May 13, 2008 Foreign Policy In Focus www.fpif.org
Recent events -- in Darfur, in Tibet, in Burma, and within China -- force an inevitable debate about the appropriate political and moral response to China’s hosting of the Summer 2008 Games, and in particular whether some form of boycott is warranted. Unfortunately, if predictably, there has been a good deal more heat than light generated by this debate, which too often reflects clashing axioms rather than informed argument. Since my own expertise lies in understanding Sudan, and in particular the ongoing genocide in Darfur, I’ll necessarily focus on this part of the debate. But few working on Sudan are unaware of the controversies associated with Chinese economic policy and human rights standards elsewhere in Africa.
My own view is that there is a morally intolerable contradiction between Beijing’s hosting of the 2008 Games, the preeminent international event in sports, and its deep complicity in the ultimate international crime, genocide in Darfur. I believe we cannot have sporting “business as usual” while China continues to be instrumental in supporting the brutal Khartoum regime in its obstruction of a UN-authorized peace support operation, designed to protect millions of vulnerable Darfuri civilians and the thousands of humanitarian workers upon whom they increasingly depend for survival.
Slippery Slope
Of course “slippery slope” arguments abound in the debate about any form of Olympic boycott. Many center on the foreign policy of the United States, instancing the war in Iraq, Abu Ghraib, and Guantanamo Bay. How can we in the United States boycott games in China, the argument goes, when the United States has also committed terrible atrocities. These are indeed deep disgraces to the US, as well as a terrible squandering of moral and political capital of precisely the sort needed in confronting the Khartoum regime. So, I would understand decisions of conscience, by athletes and governments, that put such important issues in the balance the next time the United States hosts the Games. Still, whatever the force of “slippery slope” arguments -- “no country is without sin, therefore no political or moral response targeting the Olympic host country can be justified” -- we must confront the unsurpassably grim precedent of allowing Nazi Germany to host the Games in Berlin in 1936.
Was it right to attend these Games and the propaganda extravaganza that accompanied them? Should governments, alone or together, have done more to rebuke this brazen display of fascist arrogance? However impressive Jesse Owens’ achievements were, did they counter-balance the implicit international ratification of Hitler’s dictatorship and its racist, militaristic policies? Did the International Olympic Committee do enough to speak out against the conspicuously impending horrors of Nazism? In retrospect the answers are clearly no; at the time, however, there was already far too much evidence that should have precluded attendance under the circumstances readily apparent.
For those inclined to forgive the International Olympic Committee its decision to award the Games to Germany (the IOC decision was made before Hitler assumed the Chancellorship in 1933), we should recall that the IOC would subsequently award the 1940 Winter Olympics to Hitler’s Germany (though the 1939 invasion of Poland seems to have been too much even for the IOC).
What is often lost in present debates and newspaper editorials is that the primary call is for a boycott not of the Beijing Games as a whole, but of the opening ceremonies. The world’s Olympic athletes would not be denied the chance to compete for medals and the honor of their sport. Yet even if the distinction is recognized, attempts to defend such a targeted boycott are just as often met with the thoughtless mantra of “don’t politicize the Games.” This of course ignores just how deeply political these Games have become. They are China’s post-Tiananmen coming-out party, an effort by Beijing to take what it believes is its rightful place on the geopolitical stage. They are in this sense, in their larger ambitions, aptly compared to the 1936 Olympics and Hitler’s attempt to demonstrate Aryan supremacy. To be sure, the crimes of Nazi Germany, which lay primarily in the future, were themselves genocide on an unprecedented scale, while China’s present actions represent deep complicity in Khartoum’s savagely genocidal counter-insurgency war in Darfur. But this difference cannot obscure the profoundly political nature of the two Olympiads or the shared triumphalism meant to overwhelm criticism of abhorrent domestic and international policies.
Darfur
How, then, to assess international advocacy efforts to hold China accountable in its unique role as Olympic host? In particular, how can we speak fully and reasonably about the moral claims Darfur makes upon us in the context of China’s role in Sudan? Again, I leave aside comparable questions about China’s appalling domestic human rights record, its half century of conquest and repression in Tibet, and its support for such regimes as the Burmese junta and the despotic Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe.
Darfur’s claims are of the highest order. The genocidal ambitions that have produced such staggering human suffering and destruction in this tortured region must compel the deepest moral consideration. Approximately half a million people have died from violence and war-related disease and malnutrition since the start of major conflict in 2003. More than 2.6 million people have been forced from their homes, most losing everything as their villages have been destroyed on a clearly ethnic basis. Khartoum’s deliberate, widespread, and systematic targeting of the non-Arab or African tribal populations in Darfur is a matter beyond reasonable dispute, even if a peculiar intellectual diffidence prevents certain organizations and institutions from inferring that such destruction meets all the terms specified by the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
The overwhelming majority of displaced people are now in camps, often without adequate food or clean water or security. Some 250,000 have been turned into refugees in neighboring Chad, where Darfur’s genocidal violence has continued to bleed with evermore destabilizing consequences. Even as the UN’s World Food Program has just announced that it will soon have to cut food rations by half, 4.4 million people in Darfur need humanitarian assistance.
China and Sudan
China has played a key role in sustaining the Darfur genocide and the enormous risk to regional security in the center of Africa. Beijing has over the past decade been the Khartoum’s primary supplier of weapons and weapons technology. Many weapons of Chinese manufacture continue to find their way into Darfur despite a UN arms embargo on the region. Amnesty International has reported compellingly over the past year on the deadly flow of Chinese weapons, including military aircraft, into Darfur.
China has dominated the oil development consortia, mainly in southern Sudan, and done so in a way deeply destructive of southern civilian lives and livelihoods. As China’s thirst for crude oil grows by more than 10 percent a year, Sudan has emerged as its primary source of offshore oil production. More than two-thirds of Sudan’s oil is imported by China, which shows no signs of caring for the human costs of oil extraction.
China has provided as much as $15 billion in capital and commercial investments to the Khartoum-dominated economy in Sudan. It has insulated the Sudanese regime from its profligate ways -- massive external debt would be crippling without Chinese investment – and helped consolidate the regime’s stranglehold on national wealth and power.
Most consequentially, China has continuously blocked effective UN action on Darfur, threatening to veto Security Council resolutions, weakening others, and all the while refusing to countenance any form of sanctions in the event of Khartoum’s non-compliance with UN demands or agreements signed by the regime. Insecurity, which poses the greatest threat to civilians and humanitarians in Darfur, derives directly from the arrogant defiance that Beijing has for years encouraged in Khartoum’s génocidaires. Informed UN officials and Western diplomats make clear that China is the primary obstacle to generating serious diplomatic pressure on the regime to end its obstructionist ways. Nine months after passage of the Security Council resolution authorizing 26,000 civilian police and troops, with a robust mandate to protect civilians and humanitarians, only an ill-equipped third of the force is in place, most left over from the hopelessly inadequate African Union force in Darfur. The impending rainy season will soon make additional deployments logistically almost impossible. All the while security continues to deteriorate, threatening to force a large-scale withdrawal of humanitarian operations and wholesale human destruction
Denying Beijing
China’s complicity in all of this is too clear, too destructive, too deeply contravening not only of the spirit and charter of the Olympics but of all respect for international law. Denying Beijing the reward of its desired audience for the Games’ opening ceremonies, holding the Chinese regime relentlessly accountable for those actions enabling of genocide, makes both moral and political sense.
Though not nearly successful enough, the highlighting of China’s role in the Darfur genocide has already produced a number of unprecedented actions, including Beijing’s appointment of a special envoy for Darfur, voting for (rather than abstaining from) the resolution authorizing a Darfur protection force, and publicly declaring that Khartoum should show “more flexibility” in allowing for UN deployment.
This is not enough. But it is more than enough to demonstrate the efficacy of the current campaign to highlight China’s intolerable role in sustaining the Darfur genocide. The threat to boycott the opening ceremonies of the Games is at once morally compelling and politically efficacious. In the context of complicity in genocide, the crude mantra of “don’t politicize the games” becomes an even cruder moral acquiescence.
Eric Reeves is author of A Long Day's Dying: Critical Moments in the Darfur Genocide and a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus (www.fpif.org).
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Monday, May 12, 2008
[+/-] : 2008 turns out to be a year of trouble for China
2008 turns out to be a year of trouble for China
By TINI TRAN, Google News
BEIJING (AP) — China hoped 2008 would be a yearlong celebration, a time to bask in the spotlight of the upcoming Beijing Olympics. Instead, the Year of the Rat has also brought a wave of troubles — both natural and man-made — that are putting a heavy strain on the communist leadership.
The 7.9 magnitude earthquake that struck Sichuan province Monday, killing thousands, is only the latest.
China has long experience with large-scale disasters — from coal mine explosions to chemical spills to floods that displace tens of thousands.
The central government prides itself on its ability to quickly react, usually with deployments from China's huge military corps. The ruling party's mandate in part rests on being able to deliver aid in emergencies.
But China's capacity to control disasters and how they play out in the media is being stretched this year. Its leaders are grappling with the fallout from multiple problems in the information-hungry Internet age when they had expected to focus only on the Olympics.
"The Olympics are an important symbol of China's effort to ... get on the same gauge with the rest of the world. So they have attached a lot of importance to them," said Roger Des Forges, a China historian at University at Buffalo, State University of New York.
"But for most Chinese people, they are secondary to the quality of life that they are trying to achieve. So these questions of disasters are uppermost in people's minds, watching how the government is going to deal with them," he said.
China was quick to show its public response to Monday's quake. Just hours after it struck, Premier Wen Jiabao flew into Sichuan Province to oversee the emergency relief effort. Speaking from Dujiangyan City, where a high school collapsed, burying some 900 students, Wen acknowledged on national TV the task will be "especially challenging."
This year, China's problems began just before February's Lunar New Year, when the worst snowstorms in five decades hit the densely populated southern and central region. They left scores dead, knocked out power across cities, and stranded hundreds of thousands during the country's single busiest travel period.
Meanwhile, its leaders also battled decade-high levels of inflation and struggled to improve the nation's image as a global manufacturer following last year's tainted drugs and food scandal and defective toy exports.
In March, huge anti-government riots erupted in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa, sparking sympathy protests in Tibetan areas across western China. The violent protests were the biggest challenge to Chinese rule in the Himalayan region in nearly two decades.
The subsequent government crackdown brought sharp international criticism of Beijing's human rights record and its rule over Tibet. China has said that 22 people were killed, while Tibetan groups have said that many times that number died in the violence.
Thousands of troops were deployed across a wide swath of the country to tamp down unrest and restore order. But their massive presence continued to draw an unwelcome spotlight on China's harsh rule in Tibet.
The negative attention spilled over to the Olympic flame's around-the-world tour. Meant to be a feel-good kickoff event to the Beijing Games, the relay turned into chaos as pro-Tibet protesters mounted demonstrations from the very start of the ceremonial lighting in Greece, and at stops including London, Paris, and San Francisco.
The bad news kept coming. In May was China's worst train accident in a decade, leaving 72 dead and more than 400 injured when a high-speed passenger train jumped its tracks and slammed into another in rural Shandong province. Excessive speed was determined to be the cause, and five railway officials were promptly fired.
This month also brought a sharp rise in the number of reported cases of hand, foot, and mouth disease, a normally non-deadly viral infection that has killed 39 children this year and infected nearly 30,000 others.
Only last week's feat by a team of Tibetan and Han Chinese mountaineers in bringing the Olympic flame up Mount Everest gave China the positive publicity it craved, three months to the day before the start of the games.
Beijing's leaders had carefully chosen Aug. 8 as the opening day for the 2008 games (8-8-08), believing that it was an especially auspicious day. Many Chinese people in this officially atheist nation remain highly superstitious. The number eight, "ba" in Chinese, is closely associated with prosperity and good luck because it sounds similar to the word "fa," which means rich.
China spared no expense on its Olympic debut, spending an estimated $40 billion on improving infrastructure and building sports venues. Its money was apparently well-spent. None of the venues, 31 of them in Beijing alone, was reportedly damaged.
Li Jiulin, a top engineer on the 91,000-seat National Stadium known as the Bird's Nest — the jewel of the Olympics — was conducting an inspection at the venue when the quake occurred. He said the building was designed to withstand up to an 8.0-magnitude quake.
"The Olympic venues were not affected by the earthquake," said Sun Weide, a spokesman for the Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee. "We considered earthquakes when building those venues."
Ultimately, the series of crises could prompt China to reassess its true priorities, said Des Forges.
"I think there may be some way in which these crises are reminding the government that, as important as the games are, there are perhaps more important issues that need to be addressed," he said.
Associated Press writer Stephen Wade contributed to this report.
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[+/-] : The Twin Betrayals of the Olympics in 1936 and 2008
The Twin Betrayals of the Olympics in 1936 and 2008
By Thomas Kleiber Special to The Epoch Times May 12, 2008
The Olympic Games were first held in Greece, the birthplace of democracy, and from the beginning have carried the message that nations should gather in peace and compete in sports. There is an inherent kinship between the peaceful Olympic Games and the peaceful ways of democratic and free nations, and the Olympics have had their finest moments when hosted by democratic countries.
The years 1936 and 2008 have in common the hosting of the Olympic Games by totalitarian regimes: Nazi Germany and Communist China.
Nazi Germany was a one-party regime, as is China today. Both the Nazi and Chinese Communist parties struggled to gain power and the Nazis endeavored, just as the Chinese regime is endeavoring today, to establish a good reputation by hosting the Olympic Games.
Nazi Germany invented the tradition of having a torch relay, which served to connect and bind as many countries as possible to the event in Berlin. It was a propaganda campaign, one that continues to have an impact.
China has taken the torch relay to the extreme by planning the longest torch relay ever in history, including going high up atop Mount Everest. At every step the Beijing torch is protected by "torch guards," whose presence is already a break with the Olympic spirit.
These totalitarian Olympics may put a parenthesis around the torch relay: After the protest-plagued 2008 Olympic torch relay, the IOC is considering ending the tradition that started in Berlin.
Before holding the Olympic Games Nazi Germany had started to persecute the Jewish community, although it did not begin the "final solution" until several years later. The Nazis didn't even dare to officially exclude Jews from participating in the Games (although Jews were prohibited from representing Germany in the Games).
The Chinese regime has not only started to persecute a group of people for their religious beliefs, but is even very frank about its policy of persecution. At the end of 2007 a spokesperson for the Beijing Olympic Committee stated that practitioners of the Falun Gong are excluded from all Olympic activities.
All human rights organizations and governments know that Falun Gong is one of the main victims of state-sanctioned persecution in China. Several thousand adherents have been tortured to death because of their beliefs.
In Nazi Germany, Dr. Josef Mengele started human experiments on Jews after the Berlin Olympics, during the Holocaust.
In today's Communist China medical doctors have for several years been extracting organs from living Falun Gong practitioners for profit. The live organ harvesting is believed to have started in 2001, the same year that China won the bid for the 2008 Olympic Games.
Nazi Germany needed all countries to come to the Olympic Games in Berlin as a sign of the legitimacy of the Nazi regime. Nothing less is the case in China: The attendance of government officials from around the world at the opening ceremony is considered a measure of approval for the Chinese regime.
The fascist German regime and the communist Chinese regime would appear to be opposites, although similar in betraying the Olympic spirit. However, the communist regime in China has adopted so many capitalistic measures that it cannot be considered communist anymore. Since 1989 it has transformed itself into a fascist regime that uses the Communist Party to dominate society and ruthless capitalistic measures to provide sustaining fuel for the Party's rule.
Of course, the Chinese regime doesn't have a Führer like Adolf Hitler, who was the leader of a movement that sought to vindicate Germany's greatness. However, in China, the Communist Party plays a role similar to that of the Führer, demanding all serve it as the embodiment of China's national destiny.
In the debate about whether the Berlin Olympics should have been boycotted, some claim that Jesse Owens competing in the Olympics refuted Adolf Hitler's racist theories. However, Owens' four gold medals were not able to stop the Holocaust in which an estimated 8 million were killed. In looking back, we might ask if a boycott of the 1936 Berlin Games would not have been more successful in helping avoid World War II and the Holocaust.
In 1936, there were no precedents for how to deal with an Olympic Games held in a totalitarian country. In 2008, we once again face the question how to deal with a totalitarian host of the Olympic Games.
The Chinese regime argues that sports and politics should be separated.
The Olympic Charter speaks of placing "sport at the service of the harmonious development of man, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity."
The Charter also speaks of "respect for universal fundamental ethical principles."
By describing as "politics" any objections to systematic violations of human rights that retard the harmonious development of man, deprive society of peace, destroy human dignity, and violate "universal fundamental ethical principles," the Chinese regime is not separating "politics" from sports. It is separating the Olympic Games from their hallowed purpose. And it is doing so even while increasing the persecution against groups like the Tibetans and the Falun Gong.
It is fitting that the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who grew up under communism in East Germany, should be one of the first national leaders in her actions to show an understanding of the significance of the Beijing Olympics. She knows that basic human rights cannot be considered independent from other issues, much less the Olympics, and she has lead the way for other European leaders by announcing she will not attend the Opening Ceremony in Beijing.
In 1936 the world, when confronted with a betrayal of the Olympics by a totalitarian regime, failed to uphold the fundamental principles central to the Olympic movement. This year the world gets a second chance. The nations of the world may choose to participate in the self-promotion of a brutal regime and in doing so to betray the Olympic spirit or they may insist that the Olympics must be kept true to itself.
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Sunday, May 11, 2008
[+/-] : China's latest virus: Better safe than sorry
China's latest virus: Better safe than sorry
from The Economist May 8th 2008
Once bitten, twice shy: China's past transgressions in reporting viruses come back to haunt it in the run-up to the Olympics
IT IS all too reminiscent of an epidemic that paralysed Beijing and other parts of China in 2003. This month state-run television has been showing pictures of conscientious health officials and mask-wearing schoolteachers fighting an outbreak of disease by spraying disinfectant on every accessible surface. And, as they did in 2003, Chinese authorities are insisting that things are under control.
In 2003 the disease in question was the mysterious Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). As it turned out, the Chinese authorities were lying outright about where things stood. Their obfuscation made things much worse. In the end, SARS spread far beyond China, killing 774 people worldwide. This time the problem is a less exotic and better understood bug, called enterovirus 71 (EV71), which can cause a dangerous form of hand, foot and mouth disease. This is a common childhood illness that sometimes kills but often is cured with no lasting harm.
China has reported 30 deaths in the current outbreak, centred in the town of Fuyang in the central province of Anhui. By May 7th China had reported a total of 15,799 cases. This was a sharp increase from the previous day's tally of 12,000. But officials said this was because surveillance was improving, not because the spread of the virus was accelerating.
There is no evidence of any systematic cover-up by the central government. But local officials took too long to sound the alarm. In Anhui ten doctors handling the outbreak were disciplined for misconduct and—fairly or not—China's poor track record on such matters leads to obvious questions about its openness and trustworthiness. But the World Health Organisation (WHO), which in 2003 struggled mightily with Chinese footdragging on SARS, now sees no indication of a cover-up. The WHO's China representative, Hans Troedsson, expressed concern about the unusual concentration of cases in Anhui, and about the occurrence of pulmonary and neurological symptoms not typically seen with hand, foot and mouth disease. But he also called for “the right perspective” in viewing the situation, pointing out that such outbreaks happen regularly in countries in the region.
Indeed, China last year saw a total of 80,000 cases and 17 deaths. But this year's outbreak has caused unusual nervousness because it comes just three months before the start of the Beijing Olympics in August. As the disease tends to peak in the heat of June and July, health authorities say that more cases are likely. Despite signs of new cases in two Beijing kindergartens, Mao Qun'an of China's health ministry insists the outbreak will have no impact on the games. An anxious nation and its visitors want very much to believe him.
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Friday, May 9, 2008
[+/-] : Amnesty International Steps Up Pressure on China
Amnesty International Steps Up Pressure on China
By Meredith Buel Washington 08 May 2008
Amnesty International is stepping up its criticism of China's human rights record as the opening of the summer Olympic Games approaches. With just three months to go before the opening ceremony, Amnesty said Thursday that China is intensifying its crackdown on human rights activists and those critical of the Beijing government. VOA correspondent Meredith Buel reports from Washington.
T. Kumar, the Advocacy Director for Asia at Amnesty International, told reporters during a teleconference that there has been a significant erosion of human rights in China as the beginning of the games approaches.
"It is only three months until the Olympic Games begin in Beijing and China's human rights landscape remains as bleak as ever. In fact hosting the Olympic games has become a thinly veiled excuse to crackdown on freedom of expression and assembly," he said.
Kumar says a quarter of a million people have been arrested and held without charges or trial in labor camps during China's so-called patriotic re-education campaign.
"One of the primary concerns is the detention and imprisonment of human rights defenders," he added. "There are numerous reports that Chinese authorities have arrested and imprisoned activists. These are lawyers, journalists and other activists who are fighting to change human rights in China. This is on the rise."
Kumar points to the sentencing of prominent Chinese activist Hu Jia to three-and-one-half years in prison on subversion charges.
He has urged visitors coming to Beijing for the summer Olympics not to forget human rights abuses during the pageantry of the games.
Last month prior to the release of an Amnesty report on alleged rights abuses in the run up to the Olympic Games, China lashed out at the group.
Officials said any attempt by Amnesty to pressure Beijing over the Olympics would fail. A foreign ministry spokesman also accused Amnesty of being prejudiced against Beijing.
As part of its ongoing rights campaign, Amnesty has called on the U.S. Olympic Committee to grant the group access to athletes for briefings about the human rights situation in China.
"We are not against the Olympics," he explained. "We are not even advocating a boycott. What we want is, we want U.S. athletes to know which country they are going in and what type of human rights abuses are happening there."
Kumar also called on large U.S. corporations sponsoring the Olympics to speak out against human rights violations in China.
China has resisted linking human rights issues with the Olympics saying such accusations politicize the games.
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By Meredith Buel Washington 08 May 2008
Amnesty International is stepping up its criticism of China's human rights record as the opening of the summer Olympic Games approaches. With just three months to go before the opening ceremony, Amnesty said Thursday that China is intensifying its crackdown on human rights activists and those critical of the Beijing government. VOA correspondent Meredith Buel reports from Washington.
T. Kumar, the Advocacy Director for Asia at Amnesty International, told reporters during a teleconference that there has been a significant erosion of human rights in China as the beginning of the games approaches.
"It is only three months until the Olympic Games begin in Beijing and China's human rights landscape remains as bleak as ever. In fact hosting the Olympic games has become a thinly veiled excuse to crackdown on freedom of expression and assembly," he said.
Kumar says a quarter of a million people have been arrested and held without charges or trial in labor camps during China's so-called patriotic re-education campaign.
"One of the primary concerns is the detention and imprisonment of human rights defenders," he added. "There are numerous reports that Chinese authorities have arrested and imprisoned activists. These are lawyers, journalists and other activists who are fighting to change human rights in China. This is on the rise."
Kumar points to the sentencing of prominent Chinese activist Hu Jia to three-and-one-half years in prison on subversion charges.
He has urged visitors coming to Beijing for the summer Olympics not to forget human rights abuses during the pageantry of the games.
Last month prior to the release of an Amnesty report on alleged rights abuses in the run up to the Olympic Games, China lashed out at the group.
Officials said any attempt by Amnesty to pressure Beijing over the Olympics would fail. A foreign ministry spokesman also accused Amnesty of being prejudiced against Beijing.
As part of its ongoing rights campaign, Amnesty has called on the U.S. Olympic Committee to grant the group access to athletes for briefings about the human rights situation in China.
"We are not against the Olympics," he explained. "We are not even advocating a boycott. What we want is, we want U.S. athletes to know which country they are going in and what type of human rights abuses are happening there."
Kumar also called on large U.S. corporations sponsoring the Olympics to speak out against human rights violations in China.
China has resisted linking human rights issues with the Olympics saying such accusations politicize the games.
...
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