Oct 05, 2006
By Charlotte Cuthbertson
Epoch Times New Zealand Staff
Illegal arrests, forced labour camps, brainwashing centres, organ harvesting, torture, murder, no freedom of press, Internet blockades, widespread corruption and nepotism.
Beijing is light-years away from the Olympic Charter, which talks of " the harmonious development of man" and "promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity."
Groups are suggesting the international sporting fraternity are being wooed so successfully by the Chinese regime that they are choosing to ignore the glaring reality.
When the International Olympic Committee (IOC) awarded Beijing the Olympics in 2001 under the obligation of cleaning up their dismal human rights record they probably believed it would happen.
Democratic governments are saying, "We hope the Olympics will lead to improvements in human rights."
Reality tells a different story.
Every group monitoring human rights in China has reported a worsening state of human treatment by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) since 2001.
The authoritarian regime of China continues to execute more people every year than the rest of the world combined; arbitrarily imprison and torture people who peacefully exercise their right to freedom of expression and association; torture and persecute Tibetan Buddhists, Uighur Muslims, Chinese Christians and Falun Gong practitioners; tighten media control and censorship of foreign and native journalists.
Even in direct relation to the preparation of the Games human rights are violated. Hundreds of thousands of Beijing residents are evicted without compensation from their homes to make way for development for the Games. And those who dare to protest are often persecuted, according to a joint statement of human rights organisations.
According to a Reporters Without Borders report, Vice-Prime minister Li Lanqing stated, four days after the IOC's vote, that "China's Olympic victory" should incite the country to preserve its "healthy life", especially by fighting against the Falun Gong spiritual movement which "foments insecurity".
International Olympic Committee Under Fire
Last month an international coalition of human rights organisations issued a joint statement, saying the International Olympic Committee has failed to protect Olympic ideals and is calling on national Olympic committees, athletes and sponsors to take action.
Olympic Watch, Reporters Without Borders, International Society for Human Rights, Solidarité Chine and Laogai Research Foundation said in a joint statement that despite human rights activists' efforts, "the IOC has refused to face the reality in which Beijing 2008 is to take place" and that 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".
The coalition calls on "National Olympic Committees and individual athletes to start discussing ways how they can protest the conditions under which the 2008 Games are to take place", with one option being a "full, publicly stated boycott of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games".
China's Rise on the Medal Table
China, returning to the Olympics in 1984 after a 32-year absence, has enjoyed a meteoric rise in the medal tally, albeit tainted with charges of widespread steroid use between times. In Athens 2004 they sat second only to the USA with a haul of 32 golds -– a far cry from the modest five obtained in Seoul in 1988.
The 2008 games are paramount to the CCP and they are doing everything they can to stop anything from interfering with their time in the limelight.
Meanwhile, the coalition of human rights organisations are painting Beijing 2008 as a "tool for domestic and international political propaganda of the Chinese Communist Party."
"In 2008, the international sporting movement must refuse to tolerate one of the world's bloodiest dictatorships," the coalition said.
Past Controversy and Boycotts
New Zealand was the centre of Olympic controversy in 1976 as twenty-five African nations boycotted Montreal. The IOC refused to ban New Zealand from the games for touring South Africa to play rugby, eliciting the boycott.
Four years later more than 50 countries boycotted the Moscow Olympics in a USA-led exodus. When the Soviet regime invaded Afghanistan in 1979 then-US president Jimmy Carter called for a boycott. He threatened to withhold funding and revoke the US Olympic Committee's tax exemption if it would not comply with the boycott.
South Africa was banned from the Olympics from 1964 until 1992 when its apartheid laws had been repealed.
The Olympic movement was discredited in 1936, when it allowed the Nazis to make the Games a spectacle to glorify the Third Reich.
Current Stance
Chairman of the New Zealand Paralympic Committee (NZPC) Simon Peterson says there have never been any discussions in New Zealand around boycotting; it is not something they have considered.
"At the moment we have made an assumption, right or wrong, that the IOC have done their research," Mr Peterson said.
"If you wanted to make a stance as New Zealand, you could. But I think the only people that would then lose out would be the athletes. I don't think that we [NZ] would make the slightest difference on the international stage."
Mr. Peterson said he is very open to the board doing its governance role having considered everything before they send a team anywhere.
"I think it will be quite healthy for the board to have that discussion at some point."
