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Guardian (UK): China's tarnished prize [Excerpt]

July 05, 2001 |  

Sunday July 1, 2001

Yards from Tiananmen Square, huge posters declare 'New Beijing: Great Olympics'. They line the Avenue of Everlasting Peace. One shows a robotic athlete with a Chinese dragon stepping out of his shadow, another the Temple of Heaven encircled by the five Olympic rings.

Part-plea, part-boast, they anticipate what most Beijingers believe will be China's greatest victory since the foundation of the people's republic in 1949 - winning the right to stage the 2008 Olympic Games.

[...]

No effort is being spared in Beijing's determination to triumph over Paris, Toronto, Osaka and Istanbul. Keen to dispel claims that China is restricting religious freedom as never before, the news that two Protestant churches will soon be built in the city is highlighted on the official Games bid website alongside a picture of Sunday worship in an already-renovated cathedral.

But officials will not be boasting of [...]. Nor will they be trumpeting the repression of Falun Gong, a religious [group] with millions of members worldwide, described by the authorities as 'an [Jiang Zemin government's slanderous term omitted]'.

On Friday week the 122 members of the IOC will gather 3,600 miles away in the Congress Hall of Moscow's World Trade Centre to decide which of the five contenders should win the right to stage the 2008 games. They will have to decide which gives a true picture of China - the building of Protestant churches, symbolising religious tolerance, or the alarming number of public executions and religious persecution.

Events like those highlight what human rights groups, Western politicians and underground pro-democracy campaigners in China claim the [party' name omitted] state is really like: brutal, politically intolerant, violently and systematically repressive, and therefore unfit to host any Olympic Games, which are the symbol of global harmony and tolerance.

Craig Reedie, one of Britain's two members of the IOC - the Princess Royal is the other - acknowledges that China's bid presents real difficulties for the IOC. 'There's a political dimension about going to China that isn't there with the other four. There's a substantial, and understood, element of protest about the decision to go there.

'Quite a lot of serious, well-meaning people say it's not a good idea to take the Games there. The debate we're having is: do you enhance China's chances of improving their society by awarding them the Games or denying them 2008?' said Reedie.

For weeks he has been receiving over 100 unsolicited emails a day from campaigners urging him not to back Beijing. 'If you are uncomfortable with going to China, there are two very good alternatives in Paris and Toronto. It's now up to each member of the IOC and his or her conscience,' added the Scot.

So who will he back on 13 July? 'My own conscience is telling me to think very carefully about it,' said Reedie, widely assumed to be a supporter of Beijing's bid.

[...]

Groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch seem resigned to Beijing getting 2008. China's strong odds-on status may explain why, instead of urging the IOC to overlook the Chinese capital, some campaigners are simply demanding that the award of 2008 should be used as a way of securing significant improvements in China's human rights record.

'There seems to be a slight liberalisation in the Chinese media but there's still a dire quality about China's human rights, which are near catastrophic by usual standards,' said Neil Durkin, a spokesman for Amnesty.

'Torture is widespread. Around 200,000 people are in "re-education through labour" camps, [...].'

Although many outsiders thought China would clean up its act in the run-up to the IOC vote, almost the opposite has been happening. Apart from the high number of executions and action against Falun Gong, a crackdown on dissident political activities has been in full swing since mid-1999.

Internet cafés are being monitored, or even closed down, lest they become centres of 'subversive' thought. Tibetans are still treated as second-class citizens in their own occupied country.

[...]

Labour MP Donald Anderson, chairman of the Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee which cautioned against such a move last year, still believes the IOC would be making a huge, historic mistake if it backed Beijing.

'We should reward progress after it has happened, not before anything has changed,' he said.