A Stitch in Haste

I've been meaning to get this posted for a while now, ever since China's Communist dictators, and their Olympicrat apologists, "celebrated" the one-year countdown to the disgrace that will be the 2008 Olympics:

A year before the August 8, 2008 opening ceremonies for the Beijing Olympics, the Chinese government shows no substantive progress in addressing long-standing human rights concerns. Instead, apparently more worried about political stability, Beijing is tightening its grip on domestic human rights defenders, grassroots activists and media to choke off any possible expressions of dissent ahead of the Games.

"Instead of a pre-Olympic 'Beijing spring' of greater freedom and tolerance of dissent, we are seeing the gagging of dissidents, a crackdown on activists, and attempts to block independent media coverage," said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch.

The piece identifies the following major atrocities:

• Forced evictions and school closures.


• Labor rights abuses.


• Repression of ethnic minorities.


• Controls on religious freedom.


• The death penalty and executions.


• HIV/AIDS rights advocacy obstruction.


• Use of house arrest system.


• Ties with rights violators.

China undoubtedly gets the gold medal for most of those competitions.

Not that you get to see that particular ceremony:

As part of Beijing's bid for the 2008 Olympics, in 2001 it assured the IOC that the government would ease its traditional chokehold on foreign and local journalists during the Olympic Games in Beijing. That commitment to wider media freedom is in line with the obligation of Olympic host cities to comply with Article 51 of the IOC Olympic Charter, which stipulates that the IOC should take "all necessary steps in order to ensure the fullest coverage by the different media and the widest possible audience in the world for the Olympic Games."

In other words, China's dictators promised to behave, for a change, like civilized leaders of a civilized government.

So much for that idea:

Foreign journalists have most often been harassed, detained and intimidated for pursuing stories deemed sensitive by the Chinese government, including coverage of political dissidents, Tibet, the country’s HIV-AIDS epidemic and issues of "social stability," such as riots, demonstrations and their aftermath.
...
Alarmingly, some correspondents told Human Rights Watch that China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has itself engaged in intimidation to discourage unwanted reporting. In one case, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs actively pressured a foreign news agency based in Beijing to scuttle coverage of a "sensitive" topic by one of its bureaus outside China, and retaliated with the refusal of a work visa when the news agency refused to comply.

Human Rights Watch said that these and other ongoing violations of the temporary regulations raise troubling questions about the freedom and security of the many thousands of journalists expected to come to China to cover the Olympics.

Incidentally, this new, faux "glasnost for journalists" applies only to foreigners. Chinese journalists (the real ones, not the shills for the state-sponsored media) are still subject to absolute control and censorship.

The report also documents the tightening surveillance and pressure faced by Chinese nationals who are assistants, researchers, translators or sources for foreign journalists in the run-up to the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. It examines how the Chinese government maintains a stranglehold on the activities of domestic journalists who are intentionally excluded from the new temporary regulations, and strictly censors local reporting to comply with official propaganda objectives.

Let the games begin...

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As despicable as the notion of choosing a Communist nation, or any dictatorship, to host an Olympiad may be, it is not a proper function of government to interfere:

US legislators introduced a resolution in the House of Representatives calling for a boycott of the 2008 Olympic games in Beijing unless China "stops engaging in serious human rights abuses," Congressional aides said.

Backed initially by eight lawmakers from President George W. Bush's Republican party, the resolution also calls on Beijing to "stop supporting serious human rights abuses by the governments" of Sudan, Myanmar and North Korea, the aides said Tuesday.

While it's nice to see someone in Congress giving a damn about China's human rights abuses, a repeat of 1980 is not the answer. Not to dilute the phrase, but we should have total "separation of Olympics and state." There should be no taxpayer subsidies to our Olympic teams, no use of eminent domain to build Olympic stadiums, no co-opting of the dictionary disguised as an intellectual property grant. No government involvement of any kind.

But likewise, the government has no place restricting the free movement of people or money — even to the Beijing Olympics. If Americans choose to shame themselves by participating in, visiting, or watching broadcasts of this insanity, then so be it. That's between them and their consciences.

More thoughts at Political Mavens.