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". ... Read more
Chinese officials used the visit of the Olympic torch to the Tibetan capital on Saturday to launch an attack on the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader.
The torch relay in Lhasa lasted for just over two hours, much shorter than had been planned before the unrest in Tibet in March. It went off without protests along a route lined with a heavy security presence. "We will certainly be able to totally smash the splittist schemes of the Dalai Lama clique," said Zhang Qingli, Communist party secretary in Tibet, at the end of the event, according to Reuters.
Speaking in front of the Potala Palace, the Dalai Lama's former residence, Mr Zhang said: "Tibet's sky will never change and the red flag with five stars [China's flag] will forever flutter high above it."
The government has accused the Dalai Lama and other exiles of inciting the unrest, particularly the riot on March 14 when several Han Chinese were killed. The Dalai Lama has denied the charge. The torch goes next to Qinghai province.
The decision to carry on with the Tibet visithas been criticised by Tibetan exiles and human rights groups, which accuse the government of politicising the torch relay.
"This provocative decision - with the blessing of the International Olympic Committee - could aggravate tensions and undermine the fragile process to find a peaceful long-term solution," said Sharon Hom, executive director of Human Rights in China.
"The government's insistence on parading the torch through Lhasa can only undermine the respect and trust required for a genuine dialogue with the Dalai Lama."
A small group of foreign reporters, allowed into Tibet to cover the event, said hundreds of paramilitary and other police were positioned along the route. They added that people living nearby were told to stay at home unless they had a special pass to witness the torch. ... Read more
Over the weekend the Chinese Government went ahead with its controversial plan to run the Olympic torch relay through Tibet. Heavy security guaranteed there were no human rights demonstrations. Instead, the relay ended up being a rallying point for local political leaders who vowed to destroy the Dalai Lama, even as they put new touches to some of Lhasa's landmarks.
Though foreigners are still banned from entering Tibet, after the violent rebellion in March a handful of journalists were allowed into Lhasa to cover the torch relay, which had been cut from three days in Tibet to three hours.
We were allowed to witness the relay in the capital Lhasa, along with a small, specially-selected crowd.
Most ordinary people were told to stay off the streets until it was over. Relations are still very tense between Chinese officials and Tibetans.
After the relay we were kept busy with a program full of whirlwind visits to cultural attractions.
When Tibetans restore historic buildings the workers sing and bang and tap in time. This image of happy, working Tibetans in touch with their culture is a side to life that Government authorities are happy for foreign reporters to see.
We visited the Sera Monastery where the recent conflict started in March, after its monks clashed with police on the anniversary of a failed uprising.
There are supposed to be 550 monks living at the Monastery. We saw fewer than 10. Maybe they were confined to their sleeping quarters. There were a lot of police with walkie-talkies and local officials with loud hailers telling us where we should go and to hurry up.
We were eventually presented with a "senior monk" who could talk to us. He said the monks from his monastery had been permitted in recent days to go shopping in town. He was asked what the monks are being taught in the recently introduced re-education classes.
Speaking through a translator he said that the content of the legal knowledge education was to improve the monks' understanding of state law and the constitution so that they "do not violate laws".
He seemed to want to go on to explain himself but we were denied a chance to ask another question.
We were then taken to the Potala Palace the huge former residence of the Dalai Lama.
It was here that the torch relay became a political rally when the head of the Tibetan Communist Party, Zhang Qingli, held up the Olympic torch and then announced "Tibet's sky will never change and the red flag with five stars will forever flutter high above it".
Inside the Palace on a hill overlooking the site is a room which used to be the home of China's favourite enemy, the Dalai Lama.
I got to stand in his bedroom, a small, modest space decorated with religious artefacts. Upstairs there was banging as workers carried out restoration.
It is unclear though what he would have thought had he been here to look out his window at the sights and sounds of the Olympic torch arriving to great fanfare, and local Government officials declaring their readiness to crush the "Dalai Lama clique".
What you can see from the room is a city with a heavy police and military presence.
Over the weekend trucks full of riot police were driving up and down and by late Sunday only a smattering of pilgrims had returned to the streets which are normally crowded with visitors to the holy city.
I have been to Tibet several times, and the fear and mistrust here is much worse now than it was before.
The overall sense is of a land under occupation where the occupiers are worried that the locals could turn on them at any time, and they are prepared to use the full force of the state to make sure that that does not happen. ... Read more
Beijing to limit vehicle use during Olympics Beijing (dpa) - China on Friday said it would restrict usage of vehicles before and during the Beijing Olympics to improve air quality and allow better traffic flow for visitors. All private vehicles will be limited to alternate-day usage from July 20 to September 20, based on licence plates ending in odd and even numbers, the government said.
Taxis, buses and emergency vehicles are exempt from the restrictions, while about 70 per cent of government vehicles are expected to be kept off Beijing's roads.
The restrictions are designed to improve traffic circulation and raise air quality for the Olympics in August and the Paralympics in September, the Beijing city government said in a statement.
The traffic control measures are expected to remove a daily average of about one-third of the city's 3.3 million vehicles.
The statement said many heavy trucks and all vehicles which do not meet the European number one emissions standard will be banned throughout the period.
The government will exempt all Beijing vehicle owners from road tax for the three months in compensation for the temporary restrictions, costing it 1.3 billion yuan (186 million dollars) in lost revenue.
China earlier said it planned controls on industrial pollution and suspended dust particles to improve Beijing's air quality during the Olympics.
The city will ban all excavations and concrete pouring at construction sites from July 20 until September 20, Du Shaozhong, deputy director of the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau, told reporters recently.
It will shut down inefficient coal boilers, stop work at quarries, cement and concrete plants around Beijing, and has ordered 19 heavy-polluting firms in the city to cut emissions by an extra 30 per cent in the three-month period, Du said.
Contingency plans for the Olympic competition days in August include tougher "urgent control measures" to be used if Beijing experiences "extremely negative atmospheric conditions", he said.
The International Olympic Committee said it would also have contingency plans for the possible rescheduling of cycling, distance running and other events demanding high respiratory function for more than an hour, depending on pollution and other factors such as heat, humidity and wind. ... Read more
Reporters Without Borders called today on France, as new president of the Council of Europe, and its European partners to say they would boycott the Olympic Games opening ceremony in Beijing on 8 August.
Members of the worldwide press freedom organisation unfurled a giant 100 sq.metre banner showing the Olympic rings as handcuffs across the front of a building opposite the Brussels headquarters of the Council, which began its new session today.
“Threatening to boycott the ceremony may be the only way to get concrete results,” it said. “If Europe does not take a stand, the Chinese government will be able to dismiss future European Union demands to improve human rights. The Olympic flame will be passing through the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, in a few days time and Europe’s political leaders will win respect by firmly calling now for greater freedom of expression in China. Repression of journalists there has not diminished and well-known dissident and blogger Huang Qi has just been arrested again. It is urgent for Europe to speak up.
“French President Nicolas Sarkozy has said clearly that he will not attend the ceremony unless talks resume between the government and representatives of the Dalai Lama. The situation is deadlocked and China rejected the recent United States and EU joint call for sincere talks about Tibet as interference in its internal affairs. Beijing also refuses to allow foreign journalists to visit Tibet and the neighbouring Xinjiang autonomous region where mass arrests and “re-education” operations are under way,” Reporters Without Borders said.
“The competitors at the Games rightly say it is up the politicians, not them, to sort out this tricky issue. The Council of Europe must not pass up this historic chance to create the necessary conditions to extract real progress from the Chinese government. The ruling Communist Party will not always be able to get away with answering legitimate demands to free political prisoners by drumming up nationalistic fervour.”
Reporters Without Borders has for several months been urging a boycott of the opening ceremony by heads of state and government and members of royal families. The Polish, Estonian, Austrian and Czech governments have already agreed not to attend. Most EU states have not yet taken a stand and are waiting for France to take the lead in the name of Europe.
Reporters Without Borders is also calling on European institutions to ask the International Olympic Committee to consider the criteria for allowing countries to host future Olympic Games and to take account of the local level of individual liberty, notably freedom of expression.
About 100 journalists, cyber-dissidents, bloggers and other Internet users are currently imprisoned in China, with only two months to go before the Games start. The Chinese government has not kept the promises it made to improve human rights after Beijing was awarded the 2008 Games in 2001.
For more on the Reporters Without Borders worldwide campaign concerning the 2008 Games, see: www.rsf.org (in English, Chinese, Spanish, French and Arabic). ... Read more
GENEVA (AFP) — Chinese authorities have stepped up efforts to censor dissenting voices in the run-up to the Olympic Games, a report by two human rights groups charged Thursday.
"The context related to the run-up to the Olympic Games in August 2008 has continuously strengthened an environment already hostile to human rights and their defenders," said the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders in its annual report.
The observatory is a joint project by the Geneva-based World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) and the Paris-based International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH).
It cited four people who were arrested after making protests in relation to the Olympic Games.
Among them was Hu Jia, who was taken into custody last December 27 after publicly criticising the Chinese government's failure to keep its promise to promote and protect human rights, a promise that was make when it was awarded the Games.
Hu, 34, was found guilty at a Beijing court of "incitement to subvert state power" following a one-day trial in March, and sentenced to three-and-a-half years behind bars in early April.
In a foreword to the report, writer Wei Jingsheng wrote: "In particular, last year the Chinese Government's repression has rapidly upgraded, in an effort to make sure there is no dissident voices from the people during the 2008 Olympics."
Outside China, charged Wei, some Western politicians have even tried to stop their sportsmen from expressing their political opinions on China during the Games.
In February, the London-based Mail on Sunday newspaper reported that the British Olympic Association had inserted clauses into its athletes' contracts forbidding them to comment on "politically sensitive issues."
Other human rights repression in China had included the forced evictions of citizens from their homes as well as censorship of the media and Internet, said the NGO.
Press freedom in China is now among the lowest in the world, and commentaries are tailored to meet "the propaganda standard(s) of the Chinese Communist Party," said the report. ... Read more
What the Games Mean for Beijing's Future By Elizabeth C. Economy and Adam Segal From Foreign Affairs , July/August 2008
Summary: Failure to plan for predictable problems has turned China's coming-out party into an embarrassment.
ELIZABETH C. ECONOMY is C. V. Starr Senior Fellow and Director for Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. ADAM SEGAL is Maurice R. Greenberg Senior Fellow for China Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.
On the night of July 13, 2001, tens of thousands of people poured into Tiananmen Square to celebrate the International Olympic Committee's decision to award the 2008 Olympic Games to Beijing. Firecrackers exploded, flags flew high, and cars honked wildly. It was a moment to be savored. Chinese President Jiang Zemin and other leaders exhorted the crowds to work together to prepare for the Olympics. "Winning the host rights means winning the respect, trust, and favor of the international community," Wang Wei, a senior Beijing Olympic official, proclaimed. The official Xinhua News Agency reveled in the moment, calling the decision "another milestone in China's rising international status and a historical event in the great renaissance of the Chinese nation."
Hosting the Olympics was supposed to be a chance for China's leaders to showcase the country's rapid economic growth and modernization to the rest of the world. Domestically, it provided an opportunity for the Chinese government to demonstrate the Communist Party's competence and affirm the country's status as a major power on equal footing with the West. And wrapping itself in the values of the Olympic movement gave China the chance to portray itself not only as a rising power but also as a "peace-loving" country. For much of the lead-up to the Olympics, Beijing succeeded in promoting just such a message.
The process of preparing for the Games is tailor-made to display China's greatest political and economic strengths: the top-down mobilization of resources, the development and execution of grand-scale campaigns to reform public behavior, and the ability to attract foreign interest and investment to one of the world's brightest new centers of culture and business. Mobilizing massive resources for large infrastructure projects comes easily to China. Throughout history, China's leaders have drawn on the ingenuity of China's massive population to realize some of the world's most spectacular construction projects, the Great Wall, the Grand Canal, and the Three Gorges Dam among them. The Olympic construction spree has been no different. Beijing has built 19 new venues for the events, doubled the capacity of the subway, and added a new terminal to the airport. Neighborhoods throughout the city have been either spruced up to prepare for Olympic visitors or simply cleared out to make room for new Olympic sites. Official government spending for the construction bonanza is nearing $40 billion. In anticipation of the Olympics, the government has also embarked on a series of efforts to transform individual behavior and modernize the capital city. It has launched etiquette campaigns forbidding spitting, smoking, littering, and cutting in lines and introduced programs to teach English to cab drivers, police officers, hotel workers, and waiters. City officials have used Olympic projects as a means to refurbish decaying buildings and reduce air pollution, water shortages, and traffic jams.
Yet even as Beijing has worked tirelessly to ensure the most impressive of Olympic spectacles, it is clear that the Games have come to highlight not only the awesome achievements of the country but also the grave shortcomings of the current regime. Few in the central leadership seem to have anticipated the extent to which the Olympic Games would stoke the persistent political challenges to the legitimacy of the Communist Party and the stability of the country. Demands for political liberalization, greater autonomy for Tibet, increased pressure on Sudan, better environmental protection, and an improved product-safety record now threaten to put a damper on the country's coming-out party. As the Olympic torch circled the globe with legions of protesters in tow, Beijing's Olympic dream quickly turned into a public-relations nightmare.
Although the Chinese government excels when it comes to infrastructure projects, its record is poor when it comes to transparency, official accountability, and the rule of law. It has responded clumsily to internal and external political challenges -- by initially ignoring the international community's desire for China to play a more active role in resolving the human rights crisis in Darfur, arresting prominent Chinese political activists, and cracking down violently on demonstrators. Although there is no organized opposition unified around this set of demands, the cacophony of voices pressuring China to change its policies has taken much of the luster off of the Beijing Games. Moreover, although the Communist Party has gained domestic support from the nationalist backlash that has arisen in response to the Tibetan protesters and their supporters in the West, it also worries that this public anger will spin out of control, further damaging the country's international reputation. Already, China's coveted image as a responsible rising power has been tarnished.
For many in the international community, it has now become impossible to separate the competing narratives of China's awe-inspiring development and its poor record on human rights and the environment. It is no longer possible to discuss China's future without taking its internal fault lines seriously. For the Chinese government, the stakes are huge. China's credibility as a global leader, its potential as a model for the developing world, and its position as an emerging center of global business and culture are all at risk if these political challenges cannot be peacefully and successfully addressed.
TIANANMEN'S GHOSTS
Nothing has threatened to ruin China's Olympic moment as much as criticism of the country's repressive political system. China lost its bid for the 2000 Summer Olympics to Sydney, Australia, at least in part because of the memory of the violent Tiananmen Square crackdown of June 1989. When China made its bid for the 2008 Games, Liu Jingmin, vice president of the Beijing Olympic Bid Committee, argued, "By allowing Beijing to host the Games, you will help the development of human rights." Fran蔞is Carrard, director general of the International Olympic Committee, warily supported such a sentiment: acknowledging the seriousness of China's human rights violations, he nonetheless explained, "We are taking the bet that seven years from now ... we shall see many changes."
Few would place such a bet today. For months, human rights activists, democracy advocates, and ethnic minorities in China have been pressuring the government to demonstrate its commitment to greater political freedom. For many of them, the Olympics highlight the yawning gap between the very attractive face that Beijing presents to the world and the much uglier political reality at home. Exactly one year before the Olympics, a group of 40 prominent Chinese democracy supporters posted an open letter online denouncing the Olympic glitz and glamour. "We know too well how these glories are built on the ruins of the lives of ordinary people, on the forced removal of urban migrants, and on the sufferings of victims of brutal land grabbing, forced eviction, exploitation of labor, and arbitrary detention," they wrote. "All this violates the Olympic spirit." Even Ai Weiwei, an artistic consultant for Beijing's signature "Bird's Nest" stadium, has been critical of the Chinese government. He declared in an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel, "The government wants to use these games to celebrate itself and its policy of opening up China .... By now, it has become clear to me that this hope of liberalization cannot be fulfilled .... The system won't allow it."
Protests have arisen around virtually every Olympic Games in recent history, but Beijing, with its authoritarian political system, is uniquely threatened by dissenting voices, and it has responded with a traditional mix of intimidation, imprisonment, and violent repression. Teng Biao, a lawyer and human rights activist, was seized in March 2008, held by plainclothes police for two days, and warned to stop writing critically about the Olympics. Yang Chunlin, a land-rights activist, was arrested for inciting subversion because he had gathered more than 10,000 signatures from farmers whose property had been expropriated by officials for development projects. After a 20-minute trial, he was sentenced to five years in prison. In April, the HIV/AIDS activist Hu Jia, who was also one of the authors of the open letter, was sentenced to three and a half years in jail for subversion, after being held under house arrest for several months along with his wife and baby daughter. Although the vast majority of Chinese are probably unaware of these protests and arrests, Beijing's overreaction demonstrates how fearful the Chinese government is that any dissent or protests could garner broader political support and threaten the party's authority.
CRASHING THE PARTY
The international community has also raised its own human rights concerns. For more than a year, China has endured heightened scrutiny of its close economic and political ties to Sudan. A coalition of U.S. celebrities and international human rights activists has ratcheted up the pressure on Beijing to do more to help bring an end to the atrocities in Darfur, labeling the 2008 Olympics "the genocide Olympics." The very public attention they have brought to China's relations with the Sudanese government prompted the movie director Steven Spielberg to withdraw as the artistic adviser for the opening and closing ceremonies for the Games. It also seems to have had some effect on Beijing, which now strives to appear as if it is placing more pressure on Khartoum.
The Chinese government's questionable human rights record has received even more scrutiny since its violent suppression of Tibetan demonstrators in the spring. In March, Tibetan Buddhist monks marched to commemorate the 49th anniversary of Tibet's failed independence uprising and to call for greater autonomy for Tibet and the return of their exiled religious leader, the Dalai Lama. The demonstrations soon escalated into violent protests. Chinese police forcefully cracked down on the protesters in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa and throughout other Tibetan areas of western China, leaving more than a hundred dead and injuring hundreds more.
Ignoring international calls for restraint, Beijing closed off much of the affected region, detained or expelled foreign journalists from the area, and created a "most wanted" list of Tibetan protesters. All independent sources of news, including broadcasts by foreign television stations and YouTube videos, were blacked out in China, and text messages in and out of Tibet were filtered. Vitriolic government propaganda condemned the Dalai Lama as a "wolf in monk's robes" and a "devil with a human face but the heart of a beast." Chinese officials accused the "evil Dalai clique" of attempting to restore "feudalist serfdom" in the region and called for a "people's war" against it. The international community immediately condemned the crackdown and called for Beijing to resume negotiations with representatives of the Dalai Lama. Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Czech President V塶lav Klaus, and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk have since announced that they will not be attending the Olympics' opening ceremonies.
As the Olympic torch made its way across the globe, the number of protesters along its path ballooned, from a few in Athens to thousands in London, Paris, San Francisco, and Seoul. These large-scale disruptions of Olympic pageantry humiliated the Chinese government and angered Chinese citizens, producing a wave of nationalist counterdemonstrations by Chinese living abroad and millions of virulent anti-Western posts on Chinese Web sites. A bit more than a month after Beijing's initial crackdown, senior Chinese leaders indicated a willingness to meet with the Dalai Lama's envoys. But this does not represent a fundamental shift in policy; it is merely a stopgap measure designed to quell the international outrage.
WAITING TO INHALE
Although some foreign athletes have joined the chorus of China's critics, the more immediate concern for many Olympians will be whether Beijing can ensure clean air and safe food for the duration of the Games. The city has reportedly spent as much as $16 billion to deliver a "green Olympics"; many of the Olympic sites showcase a number of clean-energy and water-conservation technologies, and for the past seven years the city has been shutting down many of the biggest polluters and steadily weaning the city's energy infrastructure off coal, replacing it with natural gas. On February 26, senior Chinese officials formally announced a more sweeping effort, including restrictions on heavy industry in five neighboring provinces surrounding Beijing, a ban on construction in the months immediately preceding the Olympics, and plans to compensate car owners for staying off the road during the Games.
But pollution levels in Beijing are still far above average. On a typical day, the city's air pollution is three times as bad as the standard deemed safe by the World Health Organization. Last August, an air-quality test revealed that pollution levels in the city had barely improved despite one-third of the cars having been removed from the city's roads. Even some senior Chinese officials have reservations about the prospects for a green Olympics. The mayor of Beijing, Guo Jinlong, admitted in early 2008 that bringing traffic and environmental pollution under control by the time the Games begin would be an "arduous" task. After all, there are few economic incentives for businesses to reduce pollution; the central government routinely calls on local officials and businesses to clean up their act to no effect. Many factory managers have agreed to slow production during the Olympics but not to shut down. In the brutally competitive Chinese economy, closing factories for several weeks could well spell the end of those enterprises unless the government provides significant financial compensation. Meanwhile, corruption flourishes, and local officials openly flout environmental laws and regulations. In January 2008, it was revealed by a Western environmental consultant, Steven Andrews, that officials in Beijing's Environmental Protection Bureau had for several years been skewing the city's air-quality data by eliminating readings from some monitoring stations in heavily congested areas.
Faced with the prospect of dangerously high levels of air pollution during the Games, International Olympic Committee officials have warned that competition in endurance sports, such as the marathon and long-distance cycling, might be postponed or even canceled. The world's fastest marathon runner, Haile Gebrselassie, has already withdrawn from the Olympic race for fear that air pollution might permanently damage his health. Many athletes are planning to take precautions, such as arriving in Beijing as late as possible, coming well equipped with medication for possible asthma attacks, and wearing masks once there.
Beijing's capacity to provide safe food and clean water for the athletes is also in question. In the past year, China has endured a rash of scandals involving food tainted with steroids and insecticides, and as much as half of the bottled water in Beijing does not meet potable-water standards. Some teams, such as the United States' and Australia's, have announced that they will be bringing some or all of their own food and that their bottled water will be supplied by Coca-Cola. Olympic officials have put in place a massive food-security apparatus that will track the athletes' food from the producers and distributors to the Olympic Village. Having promised a safe and green Olympics, Beijing must now deliver. Otherwise, it risks irrevocably damaging the historic legacy of the 2008 Games.
BEIJING'S BLIND SPOT
Beijing's failure to respond creatively to its critics and effectively manage its environmental and product-safety issues reveals a certain political myopia. China's leaders have long been aware that opponents of the regime would try to disrupt the Olympics. They prepared extensively for disturbances by developing a citywide network of surveillance cameras and training, outfitting, and deploying riot squads and other special police. They also made some attempts to defuse international hostility, such as offering to renew the human rights dialogue with Washington that was suspended in 2004 and publicly pressuring Khartoum to accept a joint African Union-United Nations peacekeeping force. But Beijing has been unable to counter the images emanating from Darfur and Tibet. Chinese leaders simply saw no relationship between the pageantry of the Olympics and Tibet, Sudan, or broader human rights concerns, and they never figured out how to engage and disarm those who did. They continue to fail in this regard.
As a result, tensions will run high until the end of the Games. There are also real worries that with the spotlight focused on Beijing during the Games, some of the opposition to the regime could take an extreme form. For example, Chinese security forces have expressed concern that activists from the religious movement Falun Gong might attempt to immolate themselves in Tiananmen Square. Because of such concerns, the 30,000 journalists covering the Games may find themselves straitjacketed when reporting on controversial stories. And despite recent assurances that a live feed from Beijing will be allowed and that the Internet will be uncensored in China, the government has yet to fulfill its promise to allow foreign journalists unfettered access throughout the country.
The Chinese public is already angry about what it sees as a pervasive bias toward Tibet and disrespect of China in the Western media. Chinese citizens are likely to view any disturbances of the Games as an effort to embarrass the country and undermine China's rise. Foreign media, corporations, and governments might all bear the brunt of the sort of nationalist backlash that the French retailer Carrefour endured -- in the form of a consumer boycott -- in the wake of the disrupted torch ceremony in Paris.
The combination of demonstrators desperate for the world's attention and the heightened nationalism of Chinese citizens makes for an extremely combustible situation. The official Beijing Olympic motto of "One World, One Dream" suggests an easy cosmopolitanism, but Chinese nationalist sentiment will be running high during the Games, stoked by the heat of competition. In the past, sporting events in China, in particular soccer matches against Japanese teams, have led to ugly riots, and the same could happen during the Olympics. If the Games do not go well, there will be infighting and blame shifting within the party's central leadership, and it will likely adopt a bunker mentality. Vice President Xi Jinping, the government's point man on the Olympics and President Hu Jintao's heir apparent, would likely face challenges to his presumed leadership.
A poor outcome for the Games could engender another round of nationalist outbursts and Chinese citizens decrying what they see as racism, anti-Chinese bias, and a misguided sense of Western superiority. This inflamed form of Chinese nationalism could be the most enduring and dangerous outcome of the protests surrounding the Olympics. If the international community does not welcome China's rise, the Chinese people may ask themselves why China should be bound by its rules. As a result, Beijing may find the room it has for foreign policy maneuvering more restricted by public opinion. This form of heightened nationalism has occasionally hurt the Chinese government, as happened after a U.S. spy plane was shot down over China in 2001. When the crew was eventually released, an outraged Chinese public accused the government of weakness and kowtowing to the West. More recently, despite a decade of increasingly close economic, political, and cultural ties between Beijing and Seoul, South Koreans were outraged by the Chinese counterprotests during the Olympic torch ceremony; in response, the South Korean government imposed tight restrictions on the number of Chinese students permitted to study in the country. Sensing the potentially damaging consequences of a prolonged nationalist backlash, the official Chinese media began signaling in May that it was time for people to move on, focus on economic development, and steer clear of staging counterprotests and boycotting Western companies.
The barrage of criticism China has endured prior to the Olympics may have brought a short-term gain in forcing the Chinese leadership to agree to meet with the Dalai Lama's envoys, but real reform of China's Tibet policy or a broader willingness to embrace domestic reforms is unlikely to follow in the near term. Nevertheless, the current controversy could yield positive results in the long run. Beijing's Olympic trials and tribulations could provoke soul searching among China's leaders and demonstrate to them that their hold on domestic stability and the country's continued rise depend on greater transparency and accountability and a broader commitment to human rights. Already, some Chinese bloggers, intellectuals, and journalists, such as Wang Lixiong and Chang Ping, have seized the moment to call for less nationalist rhetoric and more thoughtful engagement of outside criticism. The nationalist outburst has provided them with an opening to ask publicly how Chinese citizens can legitimately attack Western media organizations if their own government does not allow them to watch media outlets such as CNN and the BBC. Similarly, they have used the Olympics as a springboard to discuss the significance of Taiwan's thriving democracy for the mainland's own political future, the need for rethinking China's approach to Tibet, and the desirability of an open press.
Whatever the longer-term implications of the 2008 Olympics, what has transpired thus far bears little resemblance to Beijing's dreams of Olympic glory. Rather than basking in the admiration of the world, China is beset by internal protests and international condemnation. The world is increasingly doubtful that Beijing will reform politically and become a responsible global actor. The Olympics were supposed to put these questions to bed, not raise them all anew. ... Read more
New York, June 17, 2008 - As Beijing postponed its Tibet leg of the Olympic torch relay, the Tibetans went ahead with their protest against the Olympic torch here today. Organized by Regional Tibetan Youth Congress, Students for a Free Tibet, Regional Tibetan Women’s Association, New York and New Jersey Tibetan Community and US Tibet Committee, the event marked the 100th day of China’s crackdown in Tibet following March 14th protests in Lhasa and daily protest by Tibetans in New York.
Tibetans and supporters from New York, New Jersey, Boston, and Philadelphia gathered this morning at the Chinese Consulate with Tibetan national flags, banners, placards and leaflets to condemn the Chinese government’s decision to pass the Olympic torch through Tibet. The Tibetans say that the Chinese government is deliberately putting Tibet in the torch route to reaffirm its domination over Tibet by attributing its claim over Tibet to the passage of the torch through Lhasa. The Tibetans also fear that the China would not hesitate to resort to violent crackdown in the event of Tibetans in Tibet protesting the torch relay. Tsering Palden, the president of the RTYC, NY&NJ, told phayul that the 5 organization strongly condemn the Chinese government’s repressive policies in Tibet and that the organizations stand in complete solidarity with the Tibetan people inside Tibet which is locked down since the March crackdown. “We seek the International Olympic Committee’s intervention to remove Tibet from China’s route for the bloody torch relay, “said Palden.
Youngsters dramatizing Tibet leg of the Olympic torch relay as protesters watch, 06/17/08 The organizers said they are gravely concerned about the situation inside Tibet as reports of arrests and killings continue to reach the outside world particularly as China keeps the international media at bay. A banner that read ‘China! Allow Free Media into Tibet’, made rounds in the sky opposite the Chinese Consulate as the Tibetans shouted slogans below.
After an event that featured speeches by the organizers, a political skit by volunteers of Students for a Free Tibet, and slogan raising, the Tibetans walked from the Chinese Consulate to the UN Plaza where another gathering was held. The Tibetans raised slogans against China’s killing of Tibetan protesters in Tibet in the last three months and condemned the Tibet leg of the torch relay due this Saturday. A group of Tibetan youngsters performed a skit depicting Chinese repression in Tibet. The skit arranged by Regional Tibetan Youth Congress dramatized events related to the Olympic torch relay in Tibet and consequent clampdown by Chinese security forces. The event concluded with a march to the Chinese mission where the Tibetans continued to protest vehemently.
China has scrapped its original plans for a three-day Olympic torch relay tour of Tibet and will send the flame there just for one day this weekend, a Beijing Olympic official said Wednesday.
Zhu Jing, a spokeswoman at the Beijing Games organising committee, said the decision to cut short the relay and run it through the Tibetan capital Lhasa on Saturday was taken following last month's earthquake in Sichuan province.
"Following the earthquake on May 12, BOCOG has announced adjustments to the domestic legs of the torch relay," Zhu said.
"The Tibet leg of the relay will be on June 21, with the relay taking place in Lhasa."
The torch was originally scheduled to tour Tibet for three days from June 19 to 21 as part of its long international journey to the Games being hosted by the Chinese capital in August.
The torch is currently travelling through Xinjiang, a largely Muslim region in China's northwest, on a three-day, four-city tour scheduled to end Thursday.
The stops in Xinjiang and the Tibetan regions of China are regarded as the most sensitive of the domestic relay route, which runs for thousands of miles (kilometres) over three months through every part of the country.
China accuses Muslim separatists in Xinjiang of plotting terrorist attacks on the Games and stepped up security in the region ahead of the relay.
Tibetans are also accused of targeting the Olympics, following a crackdown on anti-Chinese government unrest in Lhasa in March in which exiled Tibetan leaders say 203 people died.
China has reported killing one Tibetan "insurgent" and says "rioters" were responsible for 21 deaths.
Despite the unrest China stuck with its original plan to take the torch relay to the top of Mount Everest on May 8 using a separate flame from the one used on the relay route through the rest of the country.
The ascent took place under tight security and triggered protests from exiled Tibetan groups who said it was a provocation and politicised the torch relay.
China's rule over Tibet was a major rallying cry for protesters who dogged the torch's month-long global journey in April before it came here.
Pro-Tibet activists have argued that the leg in Lhasa should be cancelled due to the unrest.
New York-based Human Rights Watch said Chinese authorities were using the relay as a propaganda tool and had been carrying out arbitrary arrests to prevent protests during the relay.
"It is irresponsible for the Chinese government to deliberately send a torch into a powder keg, and the IOC (International Olympic Committee) and Olympic sponsors should ask Beijing to cancel this part of the relay," the group said in a statement.
BOCOG said that 50 journalists from 31 news organisations would be allowed to cover the relay in Lhasa, which has been off limits to foreign reporters and tourists since the crackdown on unrest there three months ago.
"We will make proper arrangements for media coverage of the relay in Lhasa," said Zhu.
She declined to say whether scrapping the original three-day torch leg was connected to security fears in the Himalayan region following the unrest.
"The adjustment to the Tibet leg of the torch relay is because of the earthquake, which has caused us to make several changes to the original route," said Zhu.
According to the original torch relay schedule, the Tibetan leg was to be followed by a trip to neighbouring Qinghai and then Gansu province, which both have ethnic Tibetan communities.
Zhu said the future route had yet to be officially announced. Torch relay organisers in the Qinghai capital of Xining told AFP that they had no information and calls to the torch relay office in Gansu's capital Lanzhou went unanswered. ... Read more
WASHINGTON — National security agencies are warning businesses and federal officials that laptops and e-mail devices taken to the Beijing Olympics are likely to be penetrated by Chinese agents aiming to steal secrets or plant bugs to infiltrate U.S. computer networks.
Chinese government and industry use electronic espionage to "easily access official and personal computers," says one recent report by the Overseas Security Advisory Council, a federally chartered panel comprising security experts from corporations and the State, Commerce and Treasury departments.
Equipment left unsupervised for just minutes in a hotel or even during a security screening can be hacked, mined and bugged, adds Larry Wortzel, who chairs the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a federal panel that monitors China-related security issues for Congress. China's government also controls Internet service providers and wireless networks, he says, so computers and PDAs can be monitored and planted with bugs remotely, too.
"There is a high likelihood — virtually 100% — that if an individual is of security, political or business interest to Chinese … security services or high technology industries, their electronics can and will be tampered with or penetrated," Wortzel says.
China's embassy did not respond to requests for comment but usually dismisses espionage charges.
"The so-called accusation of the Chinese military espionage against the U.S. is groundless and fabrication with ulterior motives," Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said at a news conference last month.
China's pursuit of American government and business secrets has been noted repeatedly in federal threat assessments.
Last year, the office of the Director of National Intelligence reported that China's espionage services are "among the most aggressive in collecting against sensitive and protected U.S. targets."
Thousands of Americans are expected to attend the Olympics, including President Bush and a large entourage of federal officials. The government isn't doing enough to publicize the potential espionage risks, says Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., a former FBI agent who sits on the House Intelligence Committee, which has been briefed on Chinese espionage threats.
The reticence stems partly from the administration's reluctance to anger China, a key U.S. trading partner, Rogers says. "I appreciate their position," he adds, but by "underreporting" the threat, national security officials let potential targets get "lulled into this notion that they don't have to worry about it."
The Chinese "will take full advantage of any opportunity to not only take a peek at what's on electronic devices but also to implant them" with bugs that could provide access to U.S. computer networks, Rogers says.
Rogers and others briefed on the threat suggest that Olympic visitors purge sensitive information on laptops and e-mail devices, or leave their regular equipment at home and carry "clean" surrogates.
Travelers returning from the Games also should have their equipment checked for bugs or viruses before reconnecting to U.S. computer networks, says Ray Mey, who ran Olympics security at the FBI before joining GardaWorld as a corporate security consultant.
FBI spokesman Richard Kolko declined to discuss briefings given to federal officials and businesses. Any time executives are in a country capable of "exploiting electronic media," he says, the FBI strives "to notify them of these risks and … appropriate precautions ... Read more
Although k.d. lang has a new, big-deal record to promote - the recently released Watershed marks her first collection of original material in eight years - the four-time Grammy winner is focusing her attention on Tibet.
The 46-year-old singer/songwriter made headlines in late April when she made a special trip to Canberra, Australia to join pro-Tibetan demonstrators protesting the Beijing 2008 Olympic torch relay as it made its way through the Australian capital. She also spent time in Melbourne as a guest editorialist for The Age, another forum in which she worked to raise awareness about human-rights issues in the repressed country.
Although "Free Tibet" has been a rallying cry among many musicians over the years - a certain trio of white rappers from New York and its groundbreaking Tibetan Freedom Concert series in the late '90s immediately comes to mind - lang has personal reasons for speaking up for Tibet.
"I'm a Tibetan buddhist, that's foremost," she says matter-of-factly, over the phone. "And I have a lot of Tibetan friends. So it's my job, in a way, to be a voice of the Tibetan people."
The upcoming Olympic games in Beijing has certainly put an amplified spotlight on China's spotty human-rights track record - Google 'Beijing Olympics' and see what pops up - but Beijing isn't the first host city to endure international criticism. The 1936 Olympics, hosted by Berlin during the rise of Nazi Germany, faced a boycott by the U.S. Sixty-two countries didn't participate in the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, most protesting the 1979 Soviet invaison of Afghanistan. Over 20 African countries withdrew from the 1976 games in Montreal, protesting New Zealand's rugby ties with South Africa.
And who could forget the 1972 Olympics in Munich, in which 10 Israeli athletes and a coach were murdered by a Palestinian terrorist group?
lang says the Olympic Games has a more political past that some care to admit.
"I think the Olympics has, historically, been a political platform," lang says. "This is no exception, especially with a country who's been historically very cryptic and don't want people questioning their human-rights practices. And it's the Chinese government, not the Chinese people."
Still, there's many that would - and do - argue that sports and politics don't mix.
"That's not true," she says, simply. "Politics is people. The Olympics is the perfect place. I don't think it's necessarily the athletes themselves - they aren't hurling their politics back and forth with the tennis ball - but when you carry the torch through a country that's repressed, you make yourself open to commentary."
It would be easy to assume that lang is political in all areas of her life - and indeed, her storied music career has been punctuated with bold acts of activism, both intentional and unconscious.
When lang exploded onto the Canadian music scene in the mid-'80s and came out as a lesbian shortly thereafter, the gay community quickly embraced her as its own. Although being an openly gay musician wasn't necessarily a political move by lang, posing on the cover of Vanity Fair in a barber's chair while supermodel Cindy Crawford shaved her face with a straight razor certainly was.
Then there's the notable furor she caused in her home province of Alberta with her Meat Stinks! animal-rights campaign in the early '90s.
Incredibly, as pioneering as lang has been, none of her politics make it into her music.
"I don't use my music to voice my politics - I don't think of myself as a political person," lang says. "I have passions that become political - whether it's my sexuality, or my eating habits or my religion. I think music itself should transcend all those things. I've never used it to promote my gayness, necessarily. Music is about the listeners' relationship with the music."
So while her latest effort, the stunning Watershed, doesn't get political in the social-issues sense, it certainly gets personal. A milestone in her exceptional 25-year career, Watershed is the first record that lang has produced - as well as written and performed - entirely on her own.
Serving as a follow-up to 2004's critically lauded Hymns of the 49th Parallel - an album on which lang lent her pipes to tunes by fellow Canadian songwriters such as Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell - Watershed is a revealing album that sees lang flex her muscles as a songwriter, not just as a singer.
"I wrote over the period from 2001 to 2007," lang says. "I really took my time. It's a culmination of all the things I've touched before. I've gathered all my favourite sounds and genres and mixed them all into one." ... Read more
The Chinese government's crackdown on Falun Gong followers began in 1999 China's "genocidal campaign of repression" against a popular religion should result in a boycott of the Beijing Olympic Games, a prominent European politician believes.
Edward McMillan-Scott, a Conservative MEP, says he believed the Chinese government was carrying out organ harvesting against those in its prisoners.
He cites research by UN for special rapporteur Manfred Novak that three-quarters of China's seven million detainees are Falun Gong followers.
The religion, which encourages forbearance, compassion and truthfulness, had 70 million followers by 1999 when Beijing launched its campaign against them.
Mr McMillan-Scott says it reflects wider failings within the Chinese government.
"The situation of human rights in China is so severe we need to go back to the 1936 situation where, had we known… the Olympics would not have taken place," he said at thinktank Policy Exchange in London.
"The Olympics are all about the human spirit. China specialises in crushing it."
Mr McMillan-Scott said the European parliament had pressed the International Olympic Committee for its public and private undertakings with China on human rights issues. It responded by saying it had no political standpoint on the issue, he said.
A sense that it was too late to take action against China grew during last week's Policy Exchange debate, which culminated when the speakers focused on the IOC's decision to award China the Games in 2001.
Heavy expectations were placed on China to improve its human rights record then, fundamentally linking sport and politics in a way which attracted criticism from the panel.
Norman Baker, Liberal Democrat frontbencher and president of the Tibet Society, said the IOC "has not done what it should have done – it should have been rather firmer than it has been".
And Mr McMillan-Scott added the IOC had made a "very political decision".
"Politics are in sport. The Chinese government asked what they want and they got it. That was public opinion," he added. ... Read more
Calling for a Jewish boycott of the Beijing Olympics, 194 American rabbis recently cited the following reasons: China ’s support for the genocidal government of Sudan; the nation’s human rights record; its crackdown on Tibet; and providing missiles to Iran and Syria.
Seven words strikingly absent from this list and from the whirlwind of protests engulfing the Beijing Olympics are: “. . . Beijing ’s forced repatriation of North Korean refugees.” What makes the missing seven words here particularly depressing is that they are missing even from the lips of the most conscientious human rights activists. It would be equivalent to 194 American pastors calling for a boycott of the Nazi Olympics and failing to mention the persecution of the Jews as one of the reasons. If that had in fact occurred in 1936, the Jewish rights movement of that time would have done some soul searching in terms of how and why they were failing to communicate effectively the plight of their Jewish brethren to the world.
In 2008, Beijing is perceived as being blamed by everyone for almost everything except for the forced repatriation of North Korean refugees. Accordingly, it is time for the North Korean human rights movement to do some soul searching.
In this opportune moment when the world’s attention is fixed on Beijing and the backdrop of protests has heightened awareness of the Chinese regime’s complicity in some of the worst atrocities of the 20th century, how is it that the issue of the forced repatriation of North Korean refugees has failed to get on the radar of the majority of anti-Beijing protesters or of the Western media?
Another case in point is Western criticism of the Myanmar junta’s response to the recent cyclone.
In circumstances uncannily similar to North Korea - a regime that refuses to allocate aid donations with transparency; that turns natural disasters into man-made catastrophes; that has caused tens of thousands of preventable deaths – Western leaders have reserved their public and bold criticisms to Myanmar and largely stayed silent on Pyongyang.
Here are some hypotheses:
Reason #1:
If the South Koreans do not appear that concerned about human rights in North Korea, then why should the rest of the world be. Put in more recent terms, when the national pride of the South Korean people is more hurt by what 10,000 Chinese students did to their 50 countrymen on their own soil than by the fact that just 50 South Koreans came out to oppose Chinese forced repatriations, then the world’s deafening silence on this issue should not come as a surprise. If kin see no evil, then why should strangers.
Reason #2:
North Korea, unlike Myanmar, has nuclear weapons. Forbidding problems with no available solution in sight are easier on the conscience (and ego) to ignore than to acknowledge and seek to address. Nobody likes to be reminded of their impotence.
Reason #3:
North Korea, unlike Myanmar, borders China, the rising superpower, which does not want hundreds of thousands of refugees to pour into its country and drain its resources. So it is in China’s best interests, and consequently in the best interests of those that desire to do business with China, to downplay anything that might destabilize Pyongyang and thereby upset Beijing.
This is the tragedy that is North Korea. The country draws little attention from the world because it belongs to a dysfunctional family. The world turns a blind eye to the country’s atrocities because doing otherwise would mean looking down the barrel of a gun. And the country’s abusive partner happens to be the next superpower of the world.
What would be the value of uttering the seven words in such a tragic situation? ... Read more
I keep on asking myself: why wasn't there a clamor and protests when the Olympic Committee selected China for the Summer Olympics 4 years ago? I know that this announcement made me very angry. How could they have chosen China to host the games? Over the last 30 years I remember reading so many accounts of cruelty to animals in China, particularly in the southern part. Should not the way a country treats its animals be a factor in the selection process?
Now that the "damage" has been done and the Olympic Torch is making its way to Beijing, should I and others of my ilk boycott the games? Someone even hoped that the Olympiads would do so. But that's a very, very big stretch-- seeing as I haven't even heard any rumblings in this direction from the rank and file. But the question persists for me-should I boycott the games? At one internet site, I was one of three at the time who said we would.
I think I'll hold to that even though some incredibly compassionate and brave people who have visited some of China's live animal markets are seeing the Olympic games being held this year as an opportunity for us to urge China to improve the situation at live animal markets. Sadly though, we can't even seem to close down our own cruel ones in San Francisco-- despite wonderfully caring and enterprising people who are continually working to do so.
I guess a very great part of the problem is the customers in SF Chinatown and Fisherman's Wharf who want their frogs, lobsters, turtles, fish, chickens, quail, doves, and pheasants freshly killed and slaughtered on-the-spot. Obviously, they are not all Chinese who keep this cruelty going. But it is gratifying to know that there are Asian-American animal rights activists who are simply demanding that animals killed for food be housed and slaughtered humanely according to existing law.
They have painted for us a horrible visual picture of what happens in these live animal markets: "In Chinatown shops, live turtles are hacked apart limb by limb and shells are cut off while the animal is still alive. Chickens, frogs, and doves are suffocated by stuffing them into plastic bags. Frogs are clubbed and skinned alive."
In 1997 San Francisco attorney Baron Miller, acting on behalf of a coalition of animal rights activists sought an injunction agains 12 Chinatown live animal market merchants. In 1998 Superior Court Judge Carlos T. Bea ruled against the animal rights activists' lawsuit, arguing that the Bible's language granting humans "dominion" over animals condones animal cruelty. I had to read that twice -- for me and I hope the majority of people reading this -it is an absolute perversion of what God meant when He gave us dominion over the animals. And these are the people sitting on our benches of law?
As for the Chinese Live Animal Markets, Wanda Embar of Animal Asia, along with two of their team, Christie and Rainbow, visited one in Guangzhou in southern China. They admit that this is the hardest part of their work-- but among the most important because by monitoring the situation, they are able to expose the truth about these hell holes.
As their taxi pulled up to Maoshan Market, they heard the screams of terrified animals. Their cries echoed around each avenue of the market until they finally met the eyes of petrified dogs and cats who were minutes or hours from death. She wrote: "Panting from thirst and dehydration, crying with terror, confusion and pain, their suffering is profound. Sometimes their tails wag in hopeful anticipation that the soft apologies of people recording their pain will lead to release- until their eyes fade once again into hopeless reality and they turn away."
In tiny cages stacked high-- hundreds of dogs and cats are piled in. While they were there, one cat cage broke opened and all hell broke loose as three cats found the opening and dashed out into the lane trying to flee. But the traders quickly cornered the terrified cats and Wanda describes this terrible scene: "......grasping them around the necks with wire tongs and smashing them onto the ground until their bodies go limp. A young ginger male twitches for a few seconds and becomes still. A black and white cat convulses wildly in a semi-conscious state, blood pouring from her mouth, nose, and broken legs before awaking more fully and trying to scramble under a truck." The traders let her go knowing that she will soon die of shock and pain and isn't worth chasing."
The internet has so many facets and information re China's shame in the way animals are viewed and treated. On another occasion three members of Animals Asia made a trip to Chongqing Safari Park to monitor the situation of animal treatment there. They found thousands of bored and unhappy animals and some were forced to "perform" with the help of a whip.
At one point they drove through the tiger enclosure, where they were told to expect live animal feeding, when a chicken was suddenly thrown out of a safari park car. One tiger pounced on the live bird and began leisurely plucking its feathers before eating the meat. If this was meant as entertainment, it certainly backfired. In the past many zoos did live feeding to the crocodilians until I believe the London Zoo pioneered a more humane feeding of either freshly killed animals or frozen meat which is thawed.
So much to cover - old women in southern China boiling cats alive for their curative powers. Using caged bears with incisions to "milk their galls" for questionable medical use. And last but not least - the cruel dispatching of dogs on the menu in some Chinese restaurants. It is one thing to use dog meat, but caging them for long periods, with their snouts tied up and their front legs bound --unable to eat or drink until they are mercifully dispatched. That is barbaric.
However, less we feel too superior --what about our own food animals? We can use some lessons in compassion and humane husbandry by tearing down the factory farms from hell. And we can also make certain that the slaughter lines are slowed down enough-- insuring that no animal goes through the slaughtering process ALIVE.
I have been concerned about animal suffering ever since I received my first puppy Peaches in 1975. She made me take a good look at the animal kingdom and I was shocked to see how badly we treat so many animals. At 77, I've been a vegan for the past 30 years and I thank God every day that I am. I am most disturbed at how little the Catholic Church and Christian churches generally give to concern re animal suffering in their ministry. I wrote to 350 bishops in 2001 and only 10-13 responded. I feel that the very least they can do is to instruct that the priests give one sermon a year on compassion to animals. I am still waiting for that sermon. I also belong to Catholic Concern for Animals - founded in England in 1929. (They are on the internet) I recently sent a sample copy of their bi-monthly publication called the ARK to the 8 Catholic bishops of Ohio. Only ONE kindly responded. Somehow we have to reach the Christian teaching magisterium. There is next to nothing re animal concerns and compassion for them. They basically believe that animals are the lessor of God's creation and that gives us the right to do anything we want to them. Way wrong. We need to change their mindsets. The animals are God's first and He expects us to treat them compassionately. I loved all of Mark Hawthorne's writings. God bless him and may he continue to be a voice for the voiceless.
China's slogan for the Beijing Olympic games set to begin in a little more than two months is "One World, One Dream."
"One World, One Nightmare" might be more accurate. After I wrote a column a couple of months ago to urge a boycott of the 2008 Olympics unless China alters its repressive murderous policies in Tibet, Canadian water-polo player Rosanna Tomiuk wrote to call attention to Chinese involvement in another troubled region. Tomiuk, a member of the women's national team that fell short of an Olympic berth, is also a member of Team Darfur - an international association of elite athletes attempting to call attention to the plight of Darfur.
Tomiuk and Alouettes defensive-tackle Devone Claybrooks have joined Team Darfur in order to do what they can as athletes to shed light on one of the world's largest and least-understood humanitarian crises, the ongoing genocide in Darfur. (The United Nations has refused to call the killings in that region genocide, but both the U.S. government and a long list of humanitarian organizations call it precisely that.)
The Team Darfur athletes (many of them Olympians) are not urging a boycott. Team Darfur explicitly calls for "a celebration of the Olympic spirit, not a boycott." What they are attempting to do, Tomiuk says, is to "focus on what the world can do to help in Darfur without putting a target on the Chinese."
The situation in Darfur is as complex as it is tragic. The clash is between nomads moving south in search of water and the farming communities of Darfur. (This may be one of the first of the water-fuelled conflicts of the future, triggered by global warming.)
Militias backed by the Sudanese government (and, indirectly, by China) have been accused of mass killings in Darfur, with estimates of the dead ranging from as low as 100,000 to as high as 400,000 (the UN's estimate, even if it refuses to use the word "genocide") and another one to 2.5 million people, again depending on the estimates, displaced and relocated, many of them to refugee camps in neighbouring Chad.
The athletes of Team Darfur are hardly alone in decrying the killings carried about by Sudanese militias funded by the Chinese. All three of the remaining U.S. presidential candidates (Hilary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain) signed their names to an ad that appeared in the New York Times Wednesday, accusing the Sudanese government of genocide in Darfur and urging an end to the violence.
But it is the nature of life in our One World, One Nightmare global village that a tragic earthquake in China will make it more difficult to stop the Chinese-funded genocide halfway around the world in Darfur.
The enormous disaster of the earthquake in Chongqing has had far-reaching implications outside China's borders. In Darfur and Tibet, there was hope that pressure for a boycott or some other gesture connected to the Beijing Olympics might persuade the Chinese regime to alter its policy. But sympathy for the earthquake victims has muted the protests to a degree, even though the regime's failings in areas such as school construction are part of the tragedy.
It is perfectly natural to sympathize with the victims of the natural disaster in Sichuan province and to do everything possible to help. But it is equally natural to sympathize with the victims of the man-made tragedies in Tibet and Darfur and do everything possible to persuade the Chinese regime to alter its course.
While the Chinese have not been accused of direct involvement in the killings in Darfur, China pours billions of dollars into Sudan and buys an overwhelming portion of Sudan's oil. The state-owned China National Petroleum Corp. (an official partner in the Beijing Olympics) owns the major share in Sudan's largest oil companies. The Sudanese government has been accused of pouring as much as 70 per cent of its oil revenue into weaponry to be used against the poverty-stricken people of Darfur.
Through its investments in Sudanese oil, China is indirectly funding the government's war effort in Darfur. Even at the United Nations, China has repeatedly used the threat of a veto to keep UN peacekeepers out of Sudan.
In response, the athletes of Team Darfur are attempting to raise awareness of the crisis in Darfur and to put pressure on those countries who have failed to act to bring pressure on China to stop the violence. Team Darfur was co-founded by Olympic gold medallist speed-skater Joey Cheek and UCLA water-polo player Brad Greiner. Cheek raised more than $1 million in 2006 after announcing that he would donate his medal bonuses to relief in Darfur.
Cheek and Greiner and their fellow athletes have created a world-wide symbol, a wristband athletes can wear to raise awareness and funds to ease a humanitarian crisis.
The emphasis throughout Team Darfur is on education, not confrontation. If you take two minutes to go on Team Darfur's website and sign up, you can help to put the spotlight on Darfur - and receive a wristband.
Tomiuk says that she became involved because "I absolutely believe that I have the power to help change the world. As someone who represents my country all over the world, I have the responsibility to represent people who can't stand up for themselves. I believe in Team Darfur because it links athletes with human rights.
"I have so much freedom, but what does it mean if I can't find a way to pass some of it on to those who don't have it? There are people who are dying in Darfur and it's my responsibility to do what I can to help."
The pressure the Chinese can bring to bear to silence athletes is enormous. American softball player Jessica Mendoza, for instance, is a member of Team Darfur, but has refused to publicly criticize the Chinese because she says it's impolite to criticize her Olympic hosts, but also because one of her sponsors, Nike, has a major presence in China.
Athletes who have actually visited the refugee camps are, understandably, the most vocal. Emanuel Neto, who expects to make the Angolan basketball team, told the New York Times: "I've seen what those kids are going through and it's really, really bad. It doesn't matter at this point what will happen to me. What matters to me the most is that something has to be done." ... Read more
