By Marina Hyde, THE GUARDIAN, BEIJING
By the time you read this, world peace should have broken out. It should have broken out at precisely 8:08pm Beijing time on Friday, because International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Jacques Rogge made his traditional plea for a worldwide military truce for the duration of the Games. Yet on the off chance that the Taliban are not laying in supplies of popcorn and preparing for two weeks on the sofa, and US and British soldiers are not garlanding their tanks with flowers, now might be the time to question the IOC’s preposterously idealized version of itself.
There’s nothing wrong with calling for world peace, of course — beauty queens do it all the time. But you do need to follow it up with something special in the swimsuit round, and one can’t help feeling that the more of itself the IOC bares, the more hideous it appears.
The little guy
Strip away the grandiose statements, and an examination of how it treats the little guy should tell you all you need to know. Joey Cheek is the former US speedskating gold medallist who cofounded Team Darfur, the international athletes’ coalition that highlights the crisis in Sudan. Hours before he was due to travel to Beijing last week, his visa was summarily revoked by the Chinese government. Asked to comment on this blatant attempt to suppress an Olympic hero, an IOC droid explained “non-accredited persons do not fall within the IOC’s remit.”
Isn’t it amazing how swiftly one passes from being the winner of the Olympic Spirit Award to the status of “non-accredited person?” Two years ago Cheek won the honor following the winter Games in Turin, Italy, after donating his medal bonuses to a sport aid organization. Today, he lacks the requisite paperwork to merit even an IOC platitude.
The decision to award the Games to Beijing was always morally compromised — luminously so — and yet again the IOC find themselves highlighting their own absurdity. You can’t call for an immediate cessation of hostilities around the globe and in the next breath decline to get involved in a serious humanitarian issue because a former gold medallist doesn’t have the right accreditation pass. It’s like demanding an end to poverty then refusing to give tuppence to a beggar on the basis that he isn’t wearing a club tie.
Amazingly, it’s not even the IOC’s most unedifying moment of the past two weeks. That honor belongs to their decision to suspend the entire Iraqi Olympic team on the basis that the country’s National Olympic Committee (NOC) had not been properly recognized by the IOC. Clearly, Iraq’s real crime was not having the right paperwork, though before rescinding the ban on some (but not all) of the athletes, the IOC muttered that it was because of suspicions of “political interference in the Olympic movement.”
Two weeks ago I asked them to clarify why they had never suspected political interference when Uday Hussein was chairman of the NOC. Unfortunately, they were far too grand to comment, but having since read senior IOC member Dick Pound’s book, I discover that they couldn’t be sure that Uday was a political placeman. Thank God they didn’t put two and two together and make five.
Questionable Politics
Instead, they focus on issuing directives forbidding athletes from making any political statements. Surely it’s time the IOC re-examined their definition of what it means to be political. It seems entirely acceptable for states to politicize the Games by using them as propaganda, and for corporations to do the same (22 years of McDonald’s sponsorship feels faintly agenda-driven). Only the athletes are warned not to step out of line.
Priorities being what they are, the IOC did not bother to issue similar directives instructing China not to bulldoze homes to make way for the new Beijing. And yet they must have known this would happen, as so many Games have been preceded by what we might euphemistically describe as a tidying away of humans who don’t match the decor. Consider Mexico City, where police opened fire and killed hundreds of student protesters; or Atlanta, Georgia, where the organizing committee actually built the jail to which many people who committed new offences on the city statute book — like lying down in the street — were dispatched.
This is not “peace through sport.” These things happen precisely because the Olympic Games are coming to town, and it should be the IOC’s job to ensure that what is an amazing, inspiring world event does not come at the expense of the vulnerable.
Perhaps the most chillingly revelatory moment in Pound’s book is a quote from former IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch, explaining why it was preferable for Games to be staged in closed societies or dictatorships.
“‘Leesten, Deek,’ he said to me at one point. ‘For [the Olympics], it is much better to go to these countries. There will never be security problems,’” Pound quoted Samaranch as saying.
Now some Beijing street signs bear the instruction “Stay in to make space for foreign friends.” Stay in, stay grateful, stay schtum (quiet).
Watching the IOC grease up to the Chinese government, one can only wonder sarcastically what on earth attracted this one set of appalling old waxworks to the other — apart from a straightforward Narcissus complex.
2008年8月11日 星期一
2008年3月20日 星期四
The West and Beijing Must Share Shame Over the Tibet Crisis
By Simon Tisdall, of The Guardian, London.
Western governments have focused too much on Beijing's economic clout and not enough on its illegitimacy, which helps to explain their meek responses
China's anger and embarrassment over the Tibet protests is keenly felt and will not be easily assuaged. Its sense of betrayal is as striking as its inability to comprehend the cause of it. But Beijing's shame is widely shared. The unrest has confronted Western governments with inconvenient truths for which they plainly have no answers.
In the short term the hosts of the Beijing Olympics know they must act cautiously as the world watches, its running shoes in hand. Having been forced belatedly to acknowledge the scale of the trouble, Beijing cannot afford an even wider, more brutal public crackdown, its instinctive reaction to similar situations in the past.
State retaliation in the weeks and months ahead is likely to be stealthy and silent. For those who dared to make a stand, vengeance will come by night, in an unmarked car or an unheralded knock on the door.
This is typically how China deals with dissent, as Hu Jia (胡佳), a prominent human rights activist who went on trial for subversion on Tuesday, could testify.
Yet in blaming the Dalai Lama and his "clique" for organizing a conspiracy of sabotage, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) missed the mark. Tibet's exiled spiritual leader has long promoted an autonomous accommodation with, not independence from, China. It is younger generations of Tibetans, inside and outside the country, who increasingly call the shots and pursue more robust tactics.
An editorial in the Communist Party mouthpiece the Tibet Daily appeared to acknowledge this shift -- while revealing the true extent of Chinese fury.
`LAWLESS ELEMENTS'
"These lawless elements have insulted, beaten, and wounded duty personnel, shouted reactionary slogans, stormed vital departments, and gone to all lengths in beating, smashing, looting, and burning," it said. "Their atrocities are appalling and too horrible to look at and their frenzy is inhuman. Their atrocities of various kinds teach and alert us to the fact that this is a life-and-death struggle between the enemy and ourselves."
This official "us versus them" view implies there will be no quick end to the disturbances or the retaliation. Horrific photographs of 13 people allegedly killed at Kirtii monastery in Aba (Ngawa) town, Sichuan Province, by Chinese security forces and released on Tuesday by the Free Tibet campaign will meanwhile stoke opposition fires.
The next flashpoint could be Beijing's plan to relay the Olympic torch through Lhasa and other ethnic Tibetan areas on its journey from Greece to Beijing.
Another so-called Chinese "renegade province," Taiwan, has already refused to take part. Tibet was not given a choice.
The broader prospect now, unnerving for a Chinese leadership that has staked so much on a showpiece, self-validating Games, is of trouble continuing right through until August.
This is a worrying prospect for Western leaders, too. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said that he will meet the Dalai Lama when he visits Britain in May. If so, it will enrage Beijing, even more than German Chancellor Angela Merkel's recent meeting with the Tibetan leader.
All Brown's commercial and business networking during his China trip earlier this year could be undone.
Earlier, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband tied himself up in knots when asked about a possible meeting, refusing to say whether the government would welcome it while insisting that the issue would be dealt with "in a very straightforward and appropriate way." It's a safe bet that London hopes the Dalai Lama won't come after all.
Brown's decision to attend the Olympics opening ceremony, not normally an essential requirement despite the expected presence of US President George W. Bush, is also beginning to look like a big potential embarrassment. Steven Spielberg and Mia Farrow, attacking China over Darfur, triggered the first round of pre-Olympic, anti-Beijing media frenzy.
ROUND TWO
Tibet is round two. There are more bouts, and many more similar issues, in the pipeline, waiting to trip up an accident-prone prime minister.
European Parliament President Hans-Gert Pottering on Tuesday urged politicians to reconsider going to Beijing if violence and repression in Tibet continued. Such calls are likely to become more voluble.
Nearly all Western governments have found themselves in the same leaky boat this week, calling meekly for more information, restraint and dialogue in Tibet and knowing their advice will be ignored. All insist that a boycott of the Games is not contemplated. All worry too much about the Chinese government's economic power and not enough about its basic political illegitimacy.
All now face a growing body of international and domestic public opinion that is increasingly questioning what has been dubbed their pre-Olympics "three monkeys policy." See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil could have worked in 1904, when a power-grabbing British expeditionary force butchered thousands of Tibetans without a second thought.
But in the present-day interconnected, globalized world that Brown and Miliband talk about and China perforce inhabits, that dog won't hunt.
Western governments have focused too much on Beijing's economic clout and not enough on its illegitimacy, which helps to explain their meek responses
China's anger and embarrassment over the Tibet protests is keenly felt and will not be easily assuaged. Its sense of betrayal is as striking as its inability to comprehend the cause of it. But Beijing's shame is widely shared. The unrest has confronted Western governments with inconvenient truths for which they plainly have no answers.
In the short term the hosts of the Beijing Olympics know they must act cautiously as the world watches, its running shoes in hand. Having been forced belatedly to acknowledge the scale of the trouble, Beijing cannot afford an even wider, more brutal public crackdown, its instinctive reaction to similar situations in the past.
State retaliation in the weeks and months ahead is likely to be stealthy and silent. For those who dared to make a stand, vengeance will come by night, in an unmarked car or an unheralded knock on the door.
This is typically how China deals with dissent, as Hu Jia (胡佳), a prominent human rights activist who went on trial for subversion on Tuesday, could testify.
Yet in blaming the Dalai Lama and his "clique" for organizing a conspiracy of sabotage, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) missed the mark. Tibet's exiled spiritual leader has long promoted an autonomous accommodation with, not independence from, China. It is younger generations of Tibetans, inside and outside the country, who increasingly call the shots and pursue more robust tactics.
An editorial in the Communist Party mouthpiece the Tibet Daily appeared to acknowledge this shift -- while revealing the true extent of Chinese fury.
`LAWLESS ELEMENTS'
"These lawless elements have insulted, beaten, and wounded duty personnel, shouted reactionary slogans, stormed vital departments, and gone to all lengths in beating, smashing, looting, and burning," it said. "Their atrocities are appalling and too horrible to look at and their frenzy is inhuman. Their atrocities of various kinds teach and alert us to the fact that this is a life-and-death struggle between the enemy and ourselves."
This official "us versus them" view implies there will be no quick end to the disturbances or the retaliation. Horrific photographs of 13 people allegedly killed at Kirtii monastery in Aba (Ngawa) town, Sichuan Province, by Chinese security forces and released on Tuesday by the Free Tibet campaign will meanwhile stoke opposition fires.
The next flashpoint could be Beijing's plan to relay the Olympic torch through Lhasa and other ethnic Tibetan areas on its journey from Greece to Beijing.
Another so-called Chinese "renegade province," Taiwan, has already refused to take part. Tibet was not given a choice.
The broader prospect now, unnerving for a Chinese leadership that has staked so much on a showpiece, self-validating Games, is of trouble continuing right through until August.
This is a worrying prospect for Western leaders, too. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said that he will meet the Dalai Lama when he visits Britain in May. If so, it will enrage Beijing, even more than German Chancellor Angela Merkel's recent meeting with the Tibetan leader.
All Brown's commercial and business networking during his China trip earlier this year could be undone.
Earlier, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband tied himself up in knots when asked about a possible meeting, refusing to say whether the government would welcome it while insisting that the issue would be dealt with "in a very straightforward and appropriate way." It's a safe bet that London hopes the Dalai Lama won't come after all.
Brown's decision to attend the Olympics opening ceremony, not normally an essential requirement despite the expected presence of US President George W. Bush, is also beginning to look like a big potential embarrassment. Steven Spielberg and Mia Farrow, attacking China over Darfur, triggered the first round of pre-Olympic, anti-Beijing media frenzy.
ROUND TWO
Tibet is round two. There are more bouts, and many more similar issues, in the pipeline, waiting to trip up an accident-prone prime minister.
European Parliament President Hans-Gert Pottering on Tuesday urged politicians to reconsider going to Beijing if violence and repression in Tibet continued. Such calls are likely to become more voluble.
Nearly all Western governments have found themselves in the same leaky boat this week, calling meekly for more information, restraint and dialogue in Tibet and knowing their advice will be ignored. All insist that a boycott of the Games is not contemplated. All worry too much about the Chinese government's economic power and not enough about its basic political illegitimacy.
All now face a growing body of international and domestic public opinion that is increasingly questioning what has been dubbed their pre-Olympics "three monkeys policy." See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil could have worked in 1904, when a power-grabbing British expeditionary force butchered thousands of Tibetans without a second thought.
But in the present-day interconnected, globalized world that Brown and Miliband talk about and China perforce inhabits, that dog won't hunt.
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