The Buch stops here

International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge told the Associated Press yesterday he doesn’t want to see a boycott of this summer’s Beijing Olympics despite China’s recent crackdown on Tibetan protestors, which Tibet’s self-proclaimed government-in-exile estimated to have killed at least 80 people thus far. Rogge, who’s on a six-day tour of the Caribbean instead of consulting with the Chinese government, apparently “expressed condolences for the victims and said he hopes calm will be restored immediately,” but declined to comment on the situation beyond a brief statement against boycotts.

Rogge’s probably right to stand against boycotts. The Olympics have been boycotted for all manner of reasons over the years. 28 African nations skipped the 1976 Montreal Olympics because New Zealand was allowed to participate despite their rugby team playing an event in South Africa that reinforced the apartheid regime, 64 countries stayed out of the 1980 Moscow Olympics due to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and 14 Eastern Bloc countries refused to travel to Los Angeles for the 1984 Summer Olympics in retaliation. Boycotts aren’t a viable solution, though: all they accomplish is to make the Olympics more political than they already are, and they raise serious questions about whether the medal-winners were truly better than those forced to stay at home by their governments.

Rogge’s lack of comment on the Tibet situation is disturbing, though, and it serves as further evidence that he doesn’t really see China’s atrocious human rights record as a problem. The real issue here is why the Olympics were awarded to China in the first place. Over the years, there have been many Olympics held in countries under problematic regimes with spotty human rights records, such as the 1936 Summer Olympics in Nazi Germany, the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico (preceded by security forces killing hundreds of protesting students), the 1980 Summer Olympics in the USSR and the 1984 Winter Olympics in Yugoslavia. The IOC’s prevailing rhetoric has always been similar to Rogge’s claim to Reuters last August that the Olympics will be “a force for good,” which he’s been repeating frequently since. These changes have rarely materialized, though: in fact, the 1936 Olympics in particular were seen by Hitler’s regime as a great propaganda success. Groups such as the American-Israeli Co-operative Enterprise have even linked the lack of protests during the Berlin Olympics to Hitler’s subsequent increased aggression towards Jews and foreign powers.

“For two weeks in August 1936, Adolf Hitler’s Nazi dictatorship camouflaged its racist, militaristic character while hosting the Summer Olympics,” their website states. “Soft-pedaling its antisemitic agenda and plans for territorial expansion, the regime exploited the Games to bedazzle many foreign spectators and journalists with an image of a peaceful, tolerant Germany. Having rejected a proposed boycott of the 1936 Olympics, the United States and other western democracies missed the opportunity to take a stand that—some observers at the time claimed—might have given Hitler pause and bolstered international resistance to Nazi tyranny. With the conclusion of the Games, Germany’s expansionist policies and the persecution of Jews and other “enemies of the state” accelerated, culminating in World War II and the Holocaust.”

The point is a valuable one. It’s unclear what difference, if any, stronger protests at the Berlin Games would have made, but the Games as they unfolded certainly didn’t hurt Hitler’s cause or reputation. Today, the defining image of those games remains African-American athlete Jesse Owens besting the Aryan supermen, but as heroic as that was, it didn’t seem to make much of an impact at the time. It definitely didn’t change the views of Hitler and the Nazis on racial superiority, and it didn’t even do much for black athletes in the United States: the NFL was segregated until 1945, Major League Baseball remained segregated until 1947, and the NBA didn’t integrate until 1950.

Rogge’s inaction here illustrates the contradiction in his statements. On the one hand, he has said multiple times the Olympics were given to China to be “a force for good,” but on the other hand, he told the Associated Press in February that the IOC “is a sporting, non-political organization and we cannot solve the problems of the world.” He can’t have his cake and eat it too: either the Olympics are political (which they’ve proven to be over the years) and he should back up his words with some lobbying to actually make the Games change things for the better, or they’re purely non-political, in which case China should never have been awarded the Olympics in the first place. It’s hard to rationalize a “non-political” movement acting as a political “force for good”.

On-field performances are great, but it’s the political statements associated with them that really matter: consider the black-gloved salute of American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos after the 200-metre race in Mexico City, which remains one of the defining sporting images of our time and did great things for the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. Without Smith and Carlos taking that bold stand on the platform provided by their athletic achievements, they would have quickly faded into obscurity as merely talented sprinters. Unfortunately, as Duke University professor Orin Starn lamented in a March 3 opinion piece for the , it seems “the era of the activist athlete is over.” As Starn later wrote on Duke’s website, “It would be nice to see more sports stars try to wield their immense influence in positive ways. Now it’s too often just about winning and getting your face on a Wheaties box.”

We’ll have to see what happens this summer, but it’s certainly not looking promising. These Olympics have already been marred by accusations of the Chinese government harvesting organs from Falun Gong practioners, clamping down on Tibet, evicting many of their own citizens to make way for Olympic construction and funding genocide in Darfur, but Rogge and the IOC are content to spin off platitudes about the Olympics being a force for good without providing the lobbying or political pressure to actually bring about change. China’s desperate to look good on the world stage at these Olympics, and the time is ripe to use the leverage of the Games to bring about some meaningful change. So far, Rogge and company have been unwilling to step up to the plate and call the Chinese government out, though, preferring instead to fiddle around on tours in the Caribbean. Maybe Starn is wrong, and the era of the activist athlete isn’t over. Hollywood director Steven Spielberg has led the way, pulling out of his role as a consultant on the opening ceremonies due to concerns about the government’s involvement in Darfur. It’s now up to the athletes to use the platform the Olympics gives them, as the IOC has spectacularly failed to make use of it thus far. Boycotts aren’t necessary, but taking a stand would be greatly appreciated. As Smith and Carlos showed, sometimes you don’t even need to say anything.

Related: My previous writings on the Olympics.

Playoff prediction wrap-up: I went 7-2, with the only mistakes being a prediction of a first-round win for women’s basketball (they lost to Carleton) and a OUA finals win for men’s volleyball (they lost to McMaster)

Earlier this week, the Chinese government announced an extensive database will be kept on journalists covering the Olympics next summer. According to a Nov. 12 Associated Press story, Liu Binjie, minister of the General Administration of Press and Publication, said the government’s rationale was to stop people posing as journalists. The AP story was based off a report that ran in the state-sponsored China Daily, which also mentioned that the database was supposed to hold information on 30,000 reporters.
This proposal is incredibly troublesome. It appears as if the government will make sure the Olympics only receive shallow, positively-spun coverage. You can bet legends of investigative journalism such as Andrew Jennings—the journalist who broke the IOC’s long history of corruption and bribes in his books The Lords of the Rings, The New Lords of the Rings and The Great Olympic Swindle—won’t be allowed in: they might expose what’s really going on.
The most interesting part was yet to come, though. The next day, another AP story appeared featuring prominent Chinese officials denying all knowledge of the database. Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said the story was simply due to reporting error.
“The report you mentioned is incorrect,” Liu told the AP Tuesday. “There is no such database. I have confirmed that it was a mistake by the reporter.”
Jianchao’s denials were backed up in principle by those of Li Zhanjun, director of the Beijing Olympic Media Center.
“China’s policy for foreign reporters is quite open,” Li said. “The surveillance of reporters or a blacklist does not exist. I do not know the function of the database you have mentioned.”
Li did admit the existence of a database, though. He told the AP his office was compiling “simple data” on reporters, largely to know if their main interests were sports, economics or politics, and claimed this would help his staff give “better service” to journalists.
“The major purpose is to provide better service to reporters. The purpose is not to monitor the press or anyone,” Li said.
At best, these denials are somewhat suspect. Firstly, the initial report was in a state-run paper and quoted one of the most important press officials in the country. It was only when international furor began to rise that the government sought to distance themselves from the story. Also, Li acknowledged the existence of a database: it would require a massive leap of faith to believe that it’s solely intended to provide “better service” to journalists.
China’s history with regards to freedom of the press is quite shoddy. Reporters Without Borders ranked China 163rd out of 169 countries in their latest (2006) Press Freedom Index, beneath such noted bastions of free journalism as Zimbabwe, Saudi Arabia, and Libya. Their comments in the accompanying press release further condemned China, and referenced the upcoming Olympics as well. “We also regret that China (163rd) stagnates near the bottom of the index. With less than a year to go to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the reforms and the releases of imprisoned journalists so often promised by the authorities seem to be a vain hope,” they said.
Moreover, the U.S.-based China Aid Association released a statement last week that was referenced in the AP article about a secret order from the Chinese Ministry of Public Security banning members of such clearly-defined categories as “antagonistic elements” and “members of illegal organizations,” in addition to “media employees who can harm the Olympic Games.” This would seem to provide grounds to fear censorship during the Olympics.
An remarkable sidebar to this was the censorship that recently took place in Canada on Chinese-related topics. Globe sports writer James Christie wrote a post criticizing the proposed database for the Globe on Sports blog on Nov. 12 when the initial story came out, but it was later pulled off the site after the denials emerged the next day.
Also interesting was the CBC’s rescheduling of the prime-time debut of their documentary on Falun Gong practitioners in China. The documentary examines allegations of persecution, labour camps, and organ-harvesting that former Canadian MP David Kilgour drew attention to in a report last year.
CBC spokesman Jeff Keay said the move was necessary in order to ensure the piece was “journalistically rigorous”. However, the documentary had already aired uncensored on CBC in the early hours of the morning, and had also aired on Radio-Canada. The unedited version is airing in Spain, Portugal, Ireland and New Zealand.
Peter Rowe, the documentary’s veteran Canadian director, told the Globe’s Colin Freeze the CBC’s holding and revamping of the piece was unlike anything he’d seen before.
“We have to, quote-unquote, give balance,” Rowe said. “… I’ve never experienced anything like these kinds of demands.”
As Freeze’s Nov.8 story pointed out, the move was likely due to political pressure from the Chinese government. Keay told Freeze he had personally been contacted by a “cultural consultant” from the Chinese embassy. During the Cold War era, such consultants and attaches were frequently intelligence operatives masquerading as embassy staff to gain legal cover.
Given that CBC holds the Olympic broadcasting license, it appears to be no coincidence that this rescheduling and re-editing occurred the same week as the government’s announcement of the media restrictions. In fact, Rowe originally praised the CBC in an Oct. 29 interview with the Epoch Times for daring to run a piece that featured some criticism of the Olympics.
“The fact that they’re willing to broadcast a film that has people in it advocating the boycotting of the Olympics, which they themselves are the broadcaster of in Canada, is remarkable,” he said.
Unfortunately, it seems the CBC’s backbone disappeared when push came to shove. The reworked version of the documentary is airing Nov. 20: it will be interesting to see what’s been left in. In any case, though, it’s highly disappointing our own media outlets appear to place more importance on keeping the Chinese government happy than exposing the truth at all costs.
What will be even more interesting to see this summer is how those journalists who do make the hallowed list respond. Will they stay away from pieces reporting on the untold stories of the games, such as the terrible smog, the mistreatment of the area’s poor and the shoveling under the rug of China’s other dirty laundry, such as the alleged organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners? Or will some of them have the guts to stand up to a powerful regime, dig beneath the gold-plated veneer of the Olympics and expose the grime beneath? Here’s hoping it’s the latter.