China's Long Awaited "Year of the Olympics" Brings New Suprise --
Olympic Tide Turns Toward Free Speech and Human Rights

Olympic Tide Turns Toward Free Speech and Human Rights

By Cindy Drukier and Charlotte Cuthbertson

Epoch Times Staff
Feb 21, 2008

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(Teh Eng Koon/AFP/Getty Images)

Mention "Beijing 2008" and for many groups the phrase is as synonymous
with "human rights abuses" as it is with "Olympic Games." The two are
now inextricably linked, in a way that wasn't the case six months ago.

This is one victory human rights groups can claim in their Olympic
campaigns.

Tide Turning

Earlier this month, Hollywood icon Stephen Spielberg caused waves in
Beijing by quitting as artistic advisor to the Olympics in protest over
the Chinese regime's support of Sudan's genocide in Darfur.

Actress Uma Thurman just spoke out in praise of Spielberg's move but
thinks he should have included more of the Chinese regime's abuses in
his list of concerns.

Prince Charles has stated that he won't go to Beijing because of the
occupation of Tibet.

Public pressure has forced two National Olympic Committees to back down
on gagging their athletes from voicing political opinion at the games.

The Christian Union Party, junior member of the Dutch ruling coalition,
is now calling for a boycott of the Olympic opening ceremony as a human
rights protest, reported Reuters on Feb. 18.

Eight Nobel Peace laureates, Western politicians, Olympians, and
entertainers like Mia Farrow Emma Thompson, Joanna Lumley, singer
Angelique Kidjo and British Playwright, Tom Stoppard sent a joint letter
to Chinese party leader Hu Jintao on Feb. 12 to add pressure to the
Darfur issue.

Reporters Without Borders has been encouraging French and other
celebrities to wear it's T-shirt campaign against the lack of press
freedoms in China which Beijing promised would accompany the Olympics.

Thousands of politicians, Olympians, local celebrities, academics and
human rights defenders have been joining the Global Human Rights Torch
Relay, a year-long run through 37 countries across five continents
calling for an end to all human abuses in China.

In a recent House of Lords debate, three members were highly critical of
China's rights record citing that the regime has "no tradition of
deference to human rights."

US Congressmen Adam Schiff and eight of his colleagues sent a letter to
Liu Qi, Beijing Olympic Organising Committee (BOCOG) President,
expressing their deep concern "about the lack of improvement of the
human rights situation in China. Despite explicit promises made by
Chinese government officials in 2001, the Chinese government has not
taken serious steps to expand basic rights and freedom."

EU Vice President Edward McMillan Scott has been calling for nothing
short of an outright boycott of the games since he conducted his
investigation into the Chinese regime's practice of harvesting organs
from unwilling Falun Gong meditation practitioners.

"Most human beings recognize that China is also the world's worst
tyranny. The Olympic Games offered China the chance of reform but this
has been replaced by a massive crackdown on all forms of dissent
including religious expression," he said.

http://en.epochtimes.com/news_images/2008-1-24-mime1-crp-sm50.jpg
Supporters of a Global Human Rights Torch march through downtown San
Diego as part of the 28th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Parade. (Wenru
Yu/The Epoch Times)

IOC Position

The contention of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), when it
awarded China the honors back in 2001, was that the games would be a
force of change. IOC President Jaques Rogge told BBC's Hardtalk that he
was "convinced that the Olympic Games will improve human rights in China."

IOC Vice-President Canadian Dick Pound said, "The human rights problems
remain an issue, but it is more of a challenge and an opportunity for
the Olympic movement to make a contribution to some of its own
goals―which is to put sport at the service of mankind everywhere and
maybe bring about some change."

The Olympic Charter states that sport must be "at the service of the
harmonious development of man, with a view to promoting a peaceful
society concerned with the preservation of human dignity."

The IOC now says that there is a widespread misconception "human rights
promises" were ever sought by the IOC in the first place, according to a
CNN report release a year before the games.

Olympic Bid Campaign

Throughout the Olympic bid campaign, the international human rights
community had doggedly lobbied the IOC not to reward communist China for
its poor human rights record by allowing the regime to host the Olympic
Games.

The week prior to the final vote, the European Parliament passed a
resolution saying, "China's disastrous record on human rights makes
Beijing an unsuitable venue for the 2008 Olympic Games."

The argument worked in 1993, when China lost the bid for the 2000 games
because the Tiananmen Square Massacre was still fresh in the world's
mind, but the moral indignation did not hold in 2001.

According to Human Rights Watch, "China's aggressive campaign for those
games was accompanied by tightened controls on fundamental freedoms,
even as members of the International Olympic Committee and Chinese
officials themselves argued that the games would be good for human rights."

The Chinese Communist Party itself tacitly admitted to human rights
abuses by promising to improve. "By entrusting the holding of the
Olympic Games to Beijing, you will contribute to the development of
human rights," said the Chinese Olympic committee at the time.

However, during the final 10 months of the Olympic bid campaign,
Beijing's Mayor Liu Qi told a public rally that in preparation for the
bid, he would "resolutely smash and crack down on Falun Gong," and clear
the city of beggars, the homeless, and prostitutes, as reported by
Reuters in January 2001.

Liu Qi subsequently became President of BOCOG, and by all reports, has
made good on his promises.

Far from being a positive force for change, human rights advocates claim
that things have actually gotten worse in China because of the Olympics.

Olympics 'Endorsing Repression'

At the end of January, Belgium's Olympic committee issued a statement
saying, "Not a single participant in the Games will be allowed to give a
political opinion at the Olympic venues. Nor could athletes wear any
distinctive insignia protesting China's human rights violations."

The United Kingdom and New Zealand soon followed suit, causing storms of
protest in their respective countries. Britons were quick to point out
the eerie similarity to 1936 when U.K. athletes were obliged to "Heil"
Hitler.

Both Olympic Committees have now publicly back-peddled although amended
clauses have yet to be made public.

The standard restriction in clause 51.3 of the Olympic Charter refers
to: "No kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial
propaganda is permitted in any Olympic sites, venues or other areas."

The New Zealand agreement originally went much further stating that
athletes could not "not make statements, demonstrate (whether verbally,
or by any act or omission) regarding political, religious or racial
matters".

The government intervened and on Feb. 19 Sports Minister Clayton
Cosgrove confirmed that the New Zealand Olympic Committee would be
recommending the offending clause be brought in line with the Olympic
Charter.

Green Party Sports spokesperson Keith Locke, a staunch critic of the
clause, was pleased with the about-face.

Mr. Locke said a major reason the Olympics were awarded to Beijing was
to spotlight the human rights situation, "and thus help advance the
principles of freedom so central to the Olympic movement."

Michael Craig, chair of the Toronto-based China Rights Network, said
that muzzling athletes is "in effect, endorsing repression, endorsing
human rights abuses, endorsing torture." "Because silence signifies an
approval of the Chinese system," he said.

Craig feels that the IOC took on an obligation in deciding to give a
country like China the games, a country that promised to improve human
rights in order to win the bid.

"Then I think it becomes incumbent upon the IOC to have the courage to
challenge...China when they don't come through on the human rights
front," said Craig.

"They don't need to become political, but they should at least stand up
for themselves."

The controversies have forced other National Olympic Committees to state
their positions clearly. So far, the United States, Canada, Australia,
Germany, Japan, and Spain have declared that they will not restrict
their athletes in any way beyond the requirements of the Olympic Charter.

IOC Under Pressure to Uphold Olympic Movement
The IOC has failed to take up the human rights challenge with the
Chinese regime, say Olympic watchers.

Students for a Free Tibet, a worldwide organization of Tibetans and
their supporters, sent an open letter to Rogge in August 2007 expressing
their disappointment with the IOC.

"Not only has the IOC failed to secure improvements in human rights in
China but it has abetted suppression of dissent by Chinese authorities,"
says the letter.

Olympic Watch, an international monitoring group, also sent a letter to
Rogge in May 2007 calling on the IOC to "immediately hold the Beijing
Organizing Committee accountable for the lack of progress on human
rights since 2001, when you awarded the 2008 Olympic Games to Beijing."

In September 2006, a coalition of human rights organizations that
includes Reporters Without Borders and Olympic Watch issued a joint
statement to the IOC stating that despite human rights activists'
efforts, "the IOC has refused to face the reality in which Beijing 2008
is to take place."

The current IOC leadership may be "either too cynical, or too
incompetent, or both, to protect the Olympic ideals and take a clear
stance on the continuing human rights abuses in China," it added.

International human rights lawyer and co-author of reports exposing the
Chinese regime's practice of organ harvesting, David Matas, says the IOC
is abdicating its authority if it leaves "a dispute between the hosting
committee and the global human rights community unresolved."

"Organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners in China, though happening
in 2001, was not known then. Now it is known. It is inconceivable that
the International Olympic Committee would have awarded the Games to
China in 2001 if they accepted then that China was killing innocents in
the thousands every year in order to sell their organs for large sums to
transplant tourists," Matas said.

"What needs to be done is to ask the International Olympic Committee to
exercise that authority."

Additional reporting by Joan Delaney in Victoria, Canada, Martin
Croucher in London, U.K.

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