open Democracy News Analysis - Olympics of shame, Ramin Jahanbegloo - Comments

Chris1851 on "Olympics of shame"

Chris1851 — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 15:07:56 +0000

The following is taken from an article in the FT by Christopher Caldwell:

"A boycott would be a mistake. A semi-boycott would be both a mistake and an embarrassment.

It is hard to apportion blame in the most recent violence, partly because of Chinese press restrictions but also because of the murkiness of events. Tibet, rich in water and uranium, with vast mineral deposits, has been part of many Chinese empires. The Communist one has ruled it with an iron fist for 57 years. The Dalai Lama has spent half a century in Indian exile. Beijing has muscled its way into the province's Buddhist monasteries, mandating "patriotic education" and trampling religious life. It claims the Dalai Lama is orchestrating the Tibetan violence, a preposterous claim.

The violence is real, however, and it is savage. The most detailed account of the mayhem in Lhasa on March 14 and 15 was given this week by Jill Drew of The Washington Post. It mentions 19 people killed and 600 injured over two days. A Swiss tourist described "an elderly Chinese man clawed off his bicycle and thrown to the ground, where a rioter smashed his head with a large rock". A mob trapped five Chinese in a shop and burnt them alive.

The Dalai Lama's complaint that China is committing "cultural genocide" against Tibetans has not helped. The genocide in question involves Beijing's encouragement of immigration by ethnic Chinese people, who reportedly make up a third of the population of some Tibetan cities. Europeans who fear their cultures are being eroded by immigration and Americanisation seldom receive support from human-rights activists. Tibetans who fear Sinification are being held to a much lower standard. China, while hardly blameless, has been assigned the role of bogeyman. Like Israel during the second intifada, it gets blamed for policing too harshly, and it gets blamed when thugs go out and murder its citizens.

It is unlikely that sporting boycotts can put pressure on China as they put pressure on South Africa in the last decades of apartheid. Certainly some South Africans were desperate for validation from civilised nations. Moral appeals held promise. Many defenders of Tibet behave as if all the west needs to do is to summon its eloquence and courage. Ségolène Royal, the French Socialist leader, said carrying on with the Olympics as normal "would be a defeat for our values, our principles". Lawrence Donegan, sports columnist on the UK's Guardian newspaper, wrote: "There is no mistaking the impact a boycott of the Games by leading nations would have on the Chinese government's efforts to legitimise their despicable behaviour."

But the west's assessment of its moral prestige and influence is inflated. James Mann, the veteran reporter, made the wise point in his book, The China Fantasy (Penguin, 2007), that wishful-thinking westerners often use the word "ill-advised" to describe China's crackdowns, as if its leaders were just learning the ropes of modern-day governance and yearning for guidance. "Rarely is it acknowledged," he writes, "that the Chinese leadership did precisely what it intended, anticipating the international criticism in advance and deciding to ignore it."

China's standing in the world, unlike that of South Africa, does not rest on anyone's approval but on military and (especially) economic power. On Wednesday, US president George W. Bush called Hu Jintao, China's president, to urge him to meet the Dalai Lama. But they also discussed North Korea's nuclear weapons programme, which China plays a pivotal role in addressing. They could have discussed, as well, China's vast western currency reserves, proof that western economies are now tightly entangled with China, dependent on its goods and financing. Just as there is now a bit of hope for liberal democracy in most Chinese villages, there is a bit of slave labour and police repression in most western shoe closets.

A boycott of the Olympic opening ceremonies might cause China brief embarrassment and deprive it of a vanity-enhancing spectacle. It would allow westerners to protest while continuing to benefit from China's cheap exports and big markets. But it would not change the objective realities one whit. To assume China will be cowed by our threats to, in essence, skip a party only highlights western frivolity and delusions of moral grandeur. Symbolic gestures made by athletes will not suffice. Registering a serious protest for human rights in Tibet (or Darfur or Burma) means willingness to undergo economic sacrifices. Maybe we should have thought of this earlier."

romulus on "Olympics of shame"

romulus — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 15:56:52 +0000

lingjiewang, you can make your excuses blaming the peaceful Dalai Lama and little Tibet for so many of China's problems (hahaha, right)... but most reasonable non-Chinese people will simply see past your lame defensive arguments for what they are: excuses covering the atrocious and abominable acts of your government's vicious occupation and rape of Tibet. I am very pleased to see that a lot of the world's attention is being squarely focused on China's dirty laundry... since the Chinese government and culture are so secretive about their problems, failures, atrocities, and shortcomings. Tibet, the government effort to execute Falon Gong members and Christians for the purpose of harvesting and selling their organs for cheap, wholesale pollution of the earth (even more so than the U.S.), the blatant human rights violations committed against the now landless poor farmers in your rural provinces, the oppression and persecution of Christians and Falon Gong member, the disregard for intellectual properties, the systematic attempt to steal U.S. military and economic secrets, the bolstering and support of vicious tyrannical regimes that oppress their people in Sudan, North Korea, and Myanmar, the secret, massive buildup of your military forces, and the production and export of cheap, dangerous food products and toys for children... these are just a few of the many, many things that is very wrong about your country and now the world is getting a very clear picture of these issues that have not been addressed.

I hope that we continue to see more and more of the international spotlight put on China's filthy underside. You wanted the world to be in the spotlight so that you can only show us what you want us to see... well you are certainly in the spotlight and I am very glad that it is revealing the dirty truth of your government and your country's acts both inside China and outside.

JFox on "Olympics of shame"

JFox — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 11:07:33 +0000

We look on as the Chinese government offers another demonstration - this time in Tibet - of its contempt for what the rest of like to call human rights. And once again the West opts for appeasement over principle: the Olympics Games will not be boycotted because - the excuse comes in the form of a question - why should the participants have to suffer?

The question is of numbing triviality, and for that reason alone should give us pause. In the balance are the chances of Olympic glory for a handful of pampered athletes against the causes of human freedom, dignity and the right to self-determination of an oppressed people. The athletes may be more important to the Western powers than the trampled citizens of Lhasa; but not a whole lot more. What really matter are the expectations of all those multinational hoteliers, media companies, travel agents, airlines, manufacturers and peddlers who gleefully anticipate bumper profits from the occasion. In brief: world trade.

Western support for these Games - in a country whose government has a well-deserved reputation for suppressing its own citizens - makes a mockery of the democratic principles that we so proudly trumpet to the world. Human rights, to be sure, don't count for much anywhere in the world except as a stick to belabor countries or governments of which we disapprove. Israel in Gaza, the UK and the US in Iraq, Sudan in Darfur, Russia in Chechnya are all examples of human rights abuse - or of national integrity and principled foreign policy, depending on our viewpoint, our prejudices, or our ambitions.

Still, recent events in Tibet have demonstrated the hollowness of the argument that the Olympics will somehow prise open the door of Chinese authoritarianism. Morality demands that the Games be boycotted; Mammon will ensure that they go ahead exactly as planned.

James Secor on "Olympics of shame"

James Secor — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 19:20:36 +0000

Let us remember: there are no human rights violations in America. Repeat after me, dear professor: there are no human rights violations in America. There are no human rights violations in America. There are no human rights violations in America. There are no human rights violations in America. Do this ad infinitim until you begin to beleive it, then write another article slamming China. . .and completely miss the point. You see, herr academic, this is a specially staged wag the dog and attention is being diverted, attention intended to embarrass China--attention is being diverted from something far more important going on behind the scenes. And nobody cares. Nobody's even questioning. Far too inviting to jump on the bandwagon to whooping chorus boys, blaring horns and pounding drums. God!--the adrenalin rush, no?

Utter pewk, Jahanbegloo, but good to see, for it becomes ever more obvious with each successive China-bash that the entire situation is utterly ridiculous trash.

And, oh yes, the Dalai Lama hasn't lived in Daramsala for a very long time. For awhile he was living in a fine compound in France. Now he's in Hawaii.

michaelcalder on "Olympics of shame"

michaelcalder — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 17:48:06 +0000

...but not only from the stated premises.

The reason why the Olympics as a whole should be boycotted (until they revert to their true ideals, not just for this Olympiad) is that they no longer stand for their original Corinthian ideals, or indeed anything ethical or worthy.

For some decades now, the Olympics (and sport in general) has become "about" shallow and narrow triumphalism and crass commercialism.

When Olympic opening ceremonies revert to a simple parade of the participants around a stadium, when the venue stops becoming an exercise in political penis-waving, when we see the end of national medal league tables, and when the "sportsmen and women" revert to being amateurs, perhaps they can start again saying with honesty that politics (and commercialism, and nationalism, and...) have no place interfering with sport.

lingjiewang on "Olympics of shame"

lingjiewang — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 20:54:52 +0000

Dear Professor,

I am not convinced by your article, in fact, I find your charges 'unfounded'. Pls can I ask you a few questions?

1.Can I ask you to clarify what you meant by 'China's repressive policies'? What are your evidences for this argument? Pls tell me who killed and treated over 90% of the whole Tibetan population, those Tibetan peasants as slaves, and who saved them offered them basic human rights of food, running water, health, education and basic infrastructure? Aren't these rights very important parts of human rights?

2. Talking about human rights, did the roit Tibetan mobs have the rights to burn schools, hospitals, and common Chinese civilians? If this terrorism behavior is the right you were talking about, maybe we should forgive Bin Laden first?

3. Pls can I ask you to explain what make you think Dalai Lama 'peace-loving and non-violent ', by his genial and smiling faces, or by his peace-loving remarks? Do you prefer killings images of tibetan mobs on 14th March, or skins of slaves used as decorations or hands cut-off of peasant slaves(see When Dalai Lamar rules: hell on earth, or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_N8r1I66SA8&feature=related?)

Professor, go back to do your research! The Dalai Lamar is a lier. To given you just one example, as Michael Parenti has pointed out in his article on [i]Friendly Feudalism: the Tibet Myth[/i], “both the Dalai Lama and his advisor and youngest brother, Tendzin Choegyal, claimed that ‘more than 1.2 million Tibetans are dead as a result of the Chinese occupation.’ But the official 1953 census - six years before the Chinese crackdown -recorded the entire population residing in Tibet at 1,274,000.33 Other census counts put the ethnic Tibetan population within the country at about two million. If the Chinese killed 1.2 million in the early 1960s then whole cities and huge portions of the countryside, indeed almost all of Tibet, would have been depopulated, transformed into a killing field dotted with death camps and mass graves - of which we have not seen evidence. The thinly distributed Chinese military force in Tibet was not big enough to round up, hunt down, and exterminate that many people even if it had spent all its time doing nothing else.”

Olympics of shame, Ramin Jahanbegloo

opendemocracy — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 18:41:50 +0000

"Holding an Olympic Games means evoking history", affirmed Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympic games. The Olympic games scheduled for Beijing on 8-24 August 2008 certainly evokes the name "Tibet", including its cinnamon-robed Buddhist monks and a peace-loving and non-violent Dalai Lama seeking freedom for his repressed people (see Donald S Lopez Jr, "How to think about Tibet", 31 March 2008).

Ramin Jahanbegloo is professor at the University of Toronto. Among his books in English, French and Persian are

Conversations with Isaiah Berlin (Phoenix, 2000)

Iran: Between Tradition and Modernity (Lexington Books, 2004)

India Revisited: Conversations on Contemporary India (Oxford University Press, 2007) However, the Chinese authorities have a totally different view; they regard Tibet as a historical part of China and consider the Dalai Lama and his followers as obscurantist reactionaries opposed to the economic and social progress that the Chinese government has brought to a backward culture since it established control in 1950.

The official Chinese version of recent history is that, after Chinese troops imposed rule from Beijing fifty-eight years ago, the Dalai Lama led a violent uprising with the help of the CIA. The subversion campaign failed, and the Dalai Lama was forced in 1959 to flee to India, where he has lived in exile for half a century. So for Beijing officials, the Dalai Lama is less a devout non-violent Buddhist than a secessionist rebel. The authorities in Beijing attribute all protests by Buddhist monks and other Tibetans to a conspiracy mounted by the Dalai Lama from his exile headquarters in Dharamsala, India.

But today, after the crackdown on Tibetan protestors in Lhasa - amid the most tumultuous events in the region since 1987 - Beijing is being closely scrutinised and broadly condemned by the international community, particularly since the Olympics are around the corner (see Wenran Jiang, "Tibetan protest, Chinese lens" [7 April 2008]). Now China is worried that protests in Tibet may draw the world's attention to Tibet and away from the Olympic games. The Tibetan issue is now on the minds of all people across the world.

A higher aspiration

It is true that in theory, the Olympic games are meant to be about sport rather than politics, but the promotion of the Olympic spirit includes upholding ethics in sport and encouraging respect for human rights. The continuing evidence of persecution and human-rights abuses by the Chinese government in Tibet cannot be reconciled with the Olympic spirit set out in Article 1 of the Olympic charter, which seeks "respect for universal fundamental ethical principles."

Also by Ramin Jahanbegloo in openDemocracy:

"America's dreaming" (30 August 2004) - an exchange of letters with Richard Rorty, part of our "Letters to Americans" series

"Iran's conservative triumph" (28 June 2005) - contribution to a post-election symposium with seven other Iranian writers

"Richard Rorty: living in dialogue" (20 June 2007)

"The modern Gandhi" (30 January 2008) The choice of Beijing to host the 2008 Olympic games, without concerns about the human-rights situation in China, already transgresses the ethics of a tournament based on "the spirit of humanism, fraternity and respect for individuals which inspires the Olympic ideal" and which requires "the governments of countries that are to host the Olympic Games to undertake that their countries will scrupulously respect the fundamental principles of the Olympic Charter" (see the International Olympic Committee's code of ethics).

It is time now for nations planning to attend the Beijing Olympics to address the Tibetan problem and encourage the Chinese government to honour its Olympic pledges to improve human rights in China. The Olympic games may be a sporting event; nonetheless the event involves international norms and shared ethical values which are the foundation of global ethics. Disillusionment with the Olympic games mirrors the disenchantment with the perceived ethical values of the international community.

Thus, to revitalise the credibility of the Olympic games requires a reconceptualisation of the games as a platform for building a framework of global ethical values to counterbalance current naked economic and political priorities. In making the Olympic charter relevant to the 21st century, and in making the Olympics more than just a spectacle of sport and commerce, there is a strong case for the games to include an ethical imperative of encouraging, promoting and educating human rights.

The Olympic charter and the Olympic code of ethics explicitly refer to the concept of human rights; they speak of the "preservation of human dignity", the "harmonious development of man", "respect for fundamental universal ethical principles" and "dignity of the individual". The Chinese government's record on universally defined human-rights standards such as the death penalty, torture, freedom of expression and repression in Tibet stand in clear contrast to these principles (see Tubten Khétsun, Memories of Life in Lhasa Under Chinese Rule [Columbia University Press, 2008]).

Also on the China, the Olympic games and Tibet in openDemocracy:

Li Datong, "Beijing's Olympics, China's politics"
(22 August 2007)

Gabriel Lafitte, "Tibet: revolt with memories" (18 March 2008)

Jeffrey N Wasserstrom,
"The perils of forced modernity: China-Tibet, America-Iraq"
(27 March 2008)

George Fitzherbert, "Tibet's history, China's power"
(28 March 2008)

Dibyesh Anand, "Tibet, China, and the west: empires of the mind"
(1 April 2008)

Robert Barnett, "Tibet: questions of revolt" (4 April 2008)
t should not be forgotten that the goal of "Olympism" is everywhere to place sport at the service of the moral development of man, with a view to encouraging the establishment of a non-violent society concerned with the preservations of human dignity. It is, therefore, time to begin shaming China - demanding that if the Beijing government is going to host this premier international event, they must become responsible and accountable international partners (see Human Rights in China, Incorporating Responsibility 2008).

The right to say "no"

The Chinese leadership must understand that if they refuse to respect human rights in Tibet, then they will face an extremely vigorous, unrelenting, and omnipresent campaign followed by the boycott of the Olympic games to shame them over this refusal. Such boycotts have a long history. In 1976, twenty-five African countries boycotted the Olympics held in Montreal due to the participation of New Zealand (which at the time still had close ties to the South African apartheid regime). In 1980, the United States led a boycott against the Olympics held in Moscow, in protest against the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan (the US was joined by Japan, Taiwan, West Germany, Canada and sixty-one other nations).

So far, no significant state has turned talk of a boycott of the Beijing games into a firm commitment to do so. However, many people around the world would support their governments if they did call for one. In 1936, the totalitarian nature of the Adolf Hitler regime was already evident to those who allowed Berlin to host the Olympics in what became a Nazi propaganda showcase; Avery Brundage, then president of the United States Olympic committee (later of the International Olympic Committee as a whole), responded with scepticism to reports of concentration camps in Germany, and scorned what he regarded as rumours spread by Jewish groups.

Today, citizens around the world know - as many did not know in 1936 - what is happening behind the scenes in Tibet, and what has happened during the last six repressive decades. It is time for all the world's leading public figures to make their dissentient voices heard on behalf of those in Tibet who are denied this selfsame basic right of speaking out in protest. It is time to say "no" to the Olympics of shame.

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