The Buch stops here

On Wednesday, the Belgian Olympic Committee announced it would ban its athletes from discussing political issues this summer in Beijing while in the Olympic village or at Olympic venues. They also added that they will prohibit their athletes from wearing any clothing deemed to criticize China’s human rights record. This is likely a political move, given that Jacques Rogge, a Belgian, is the current president of the International Olympic Committee. There will be plenty of politics around these Games, so it makes sense for Rogge to try and keep his own
backyard from causing him problems. It’s certainly troubling for free speech to position a gag order on athletes, though.
The Globe and Mail’s James Christie wrote a quality piece on this subject for the Globe on Sports blog. As he eloquently pointed out, freedom of the press was supposed to be a key feature of these games.
“One of the big selling points that got the 2008 Olympic Games for Beijing was that, with all the world’s athletes and media on hand, the Games would be a vehicle for change,” Christie wrote. “Freedom of the press, a more open China … that’s what helped Beijing overwhelm Toronto’s technically superior bid for the Games. The Chinese organizers made a point of emphasizing that media would have unprecedented liberties to report on what they see. The same isn’t true for athletes, apparently. … Europeans and North Americans can’t expect that the Olympics will transform China into a Western style democracy. But slapping a silencer on athletes smacks of repressive policies influencing what happens in the West, rather than the so-called “positive influence” going into China.”
Christie also wrote an excellent article on the subject for the newspaper’s print edition, featuring an interview with Phelim Kine of Human Rights Watch, who wrote a great comment piece for the Globe last year on the deplorable tactics the Chinese government has taken to ensure the Olympics receive only positive coverage, including harassment, detention, and even physical attacks on foreign journalists. Kine had an interesting take on the ban, arguing that it might set a precedent for other countries to gag their athletes on speaking out during the games.
“I’d say it’s dispiriting and it bodes ill for what other national Olympic committees might choose to do,” Kine told Christie. “There have been indications from the Chinese side that there will be no tolerance for dissent. The fact that teams are becoming complicit with that is unreasonable, and not keeping with the Olympic spirit. The Olympic Charter is dedicated to fundamental ethical principles, and obviously the expression of opinion on social or political topics should fall within that fact.”
Fortunately, other countries haven’t yet followed Belgium’s lead in banning their athletes from discussing such controversial subjects as freedom of speech, the occupation of Tibet, and the alleged organ harvesting of Falun Gong. The Dutch government has said that they hope to use the Olympics to press for change in Beijing, while the Canadian and American governments have said they won’t stand in the way if their athletes want to take a stand. Chris Rudge, the chief executive officer of the Canadian Olympic Committee, made some very positive comments in an interview with Christie.
“It is not our intent to give any kind of edict,” Rudge said. “Our athletes are mature enough and smart enough to know what they want to say and when it’s appropriate to say it. We respect their rights and opinions.”
It’s great to see Canada and the U.S. allowing their athletes to take a stand against political oppression thus far. Sadly, that hasn’t always been the case. Consider the bowed-head, black-gloved salute given by African-American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos on the 200-metre race podium in 1968, showing their solidarity with the civil rights movement and their sympathy for the poor conditions of African-Americans in the U.S. As a result, they were expelled from the Olympics by IOC President Avery Brundage for bringing politics into the Games. They were ostracized by many back home, and even received death threats. The third man on the podium, Australian Peter Norman, also helped with the cause by wearing an Olympic Project for Human Rights badge and came up with the suggestion that Smith and Carlos should each wear one of Smith’s black gloves. For his assistance, he was reprimanded by the Australian Olympic Committee and heavily criticized in the Australian media.
However, recent times have looked more favorably on the actions of the trio in Mexico back in 1968. In 2005, San Jose State University erected a 20-foot statue of Smith and Carlos, alumni of the university. Positive interpretations of the incident now tend to dominate, and the image became one of the defining symbols of the struggle for civil rights.
Whether you agree or disagree with Smith, Carlos and Norman in this instance, the Olympic Games have always been political to one degree or another. They give a forum to those who might never otherwise get the chance, and this has often had positive results. Regardless of the results, though, it’s still important not to try to suppress people’s beliefs and ideas. The Olympics has always been politicized , like every major sporting event, so it’s a little late to try and divorce the political influences now. In fact, denying athletes the right to express themselves is itself a political statement.
Sometimes, nothing needs to be said, and athletic performances speak for themselves: consider the four gold medals Jesse Owens won in Berlin in front of Adolf Hitler, which showed the futility of the notion of an Aryan master race more clearly and concisely than any scholarly work on the subject. At other times, athletes need to take an outright stand for their beliefs, which they should be allowed to express. As Beatrice Hall famously paraphrased Voltaire, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” The Belgian Olympic Committee wants to take away this right from their athletes: let’s hope that other countries don’t follow suit.

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.