Pro-Tibet groups call for Olympic boycott
More than 60,000 Swiss have signed a petition demanding that President Pascal Couchepin boycott the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony on August 8.
The petition, organised by four pro-Tibet organisations, was handed over to the government on Thursday.
Couchepin announced at the end of May that he would attend the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games.
"Switzerland is home to the headquarters of the International Olympic Committee and other international sports federations, so it is only natural that the Swiss president attends the opening of the games," Couchepin said at the time.
The pro-Tibet groups also launched a campaign on Thursday, calling on the Swiss not to forget the Chinese-ruled region during the sporting event.
Switzerland is home to around 3,500 Tibetans.
from:
http://www.swissinfo.ch/
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Showing posts with label IOC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label IOC. Show all posts
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
[+/-] : IOC investigates anti-Dalai Lama torch relay speech
IOC investigates anti-Dalai Lama torch relay speech
By Nick Mulvenney,BEIJING, June 25 (Reuters)
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is investigating a speech made by Tibet's Communist Party boss at the end of last weekend's Beijing torch relay leg in Lhasa in which he denounced the Dalai Lama.
But it was not immediately clear what the IOC, which is largely powerless and has vigorously defended its policy of non-involvement in politics, could do. It has said before it has "no political mandate" to instruct countries how to behave.
IOC communications director Giselle Davies said Beijing organisers (BOCOG) had been asked to provide the contents of Zhang Qingli's speech and said it "would regret very much" if media reports were accurate.
Hardliner Zhang made the comments at a ceremony marking the end of Saturday's two-hour parade of the Olympic flame through the streets of Lhasa, the scene of anti-Chinese riots in March.
"Tibet's sky will never change and the red flag with five stars will forever flutter high above it ... we will certainly be able to totally smash the splittist schemes of the Dalai Lama clique," he said in front of the Potala, the traditional seat of the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism.
Beijing blamed Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, and his followers for the March 14 riots in Lhasa and accused him of scheming to split the Himalayan region from China.
China often rails against the Dalai Lama, but not at Olympic-related events. It has often denounced critics for politicising the Games and the Olympic charter states that no kind of demonstration or political propaganda is permitted "in any Olympic sites or other areas".
The Dalai Lama denied being behind the riots, said he just wanted autonomy and religious freedom in Tibetan areas of the country and has called on his followers to support the Beijing Olympics as well as the torch relay.
The transcript of Zhang's speech on the website of the Tibet Information Office website (info.tibet.cn) omitted the line about the Dalai Lama.
Lhasa's Communist Party boss, Qin Yizhi, also denounced the Dalai Lama at the opening ceremony of the Lhasa leg of the relay on Saturday, saying it would "smash the scheming of the Dalai clique".
Tibet has cast a long shadow over the torch relay, which China hoped would project the image of a modern and vibrant country ahead of the Games.
But the March riots became a focus of anti-Chinese protests and counter-demonstrations on relay legs in London, Paris and San Francisco, prompting ugly scenes which alarmed the IOC.
The Vancouver Sun reported on Wednesday that the international leg of the Beijing Paralympic torch relay, scheduled to take in London, Vancouver and Sochi, had been cancelled.
A BOCOG spokesman did not confirm the cancellation but a news conference has been called for 0700 GMT on the "Scale Reduction of Beijing 2008 Paralympic Torch Relay".
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Wednesday, May 28, 2008
[+/-] : 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
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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Thursday, May 15, 2008
[+/-] : 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
[+/-] : 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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Tuesday, May 6, 2008
[+/-] : Take Action: No Olympic Torch in Tibet!
Tell Coke: No Torch in Tibet!
Coca-Cola, one of the most powerful corporations in the world, is an official sponsor of China's torch relay. Please join Tibetans and supporters worldwide in calling on Coke's executives to use their influence to pressure the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to withdraw Tibet from the torch relay route. Click here to take action now (link is: www.studentsforafreetibet.org/coke)
Also, please keep the pressure on the IOC Executive Members, click here to contact them now. (http://actionnetwork.org/campaign/ioc_executive)
Spread the word by sharing the video above and Click here to learn more....
Read more
Coca-Cola, one of the most powerful corporations in the world, is an official sponsor of China's torch relay. Please join Tibetans and supporters worldwide in calling on Coke's executives to use their influence to pressure the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to withdraw Tibet from the torch relay route. Click here to take action now (link is: www.studentsforafreetibet.org/coke)
Also, please keep the pressure on the IOC Executive Members, click here to contact them now. (http://actionnetwork.org/campaign/ioc_executive)
Spread the word by sharing the video above and Click here to learn more....
Read more
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