Caption: paramilitary police stand guard before a Beijing 2008 Olympic Games symbol in Tiananmen Square
“To speak of human rights is not politics; only authoritarian and totalitarian regimes try to make it so,” according to an appeal to the International Olympic Committee by an international eminent persons group.”To speak of human rights is a duty,” the group insists, calling on the IOC to demand full access to information at the Beijing Olympics and asking athletes to express their support for Chinese dissidents.
Athletes should learn about the real situation in China and to highlight human rights violations, using their “liberty to support those whose freedoms, even at the time of the Olympics, are denied by the Chinese government”. The signatories include writer and former Czech president Václav Havel, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Chinese dissident Wei Jingsheng, European Parliament Vice-President Edward McMillan-Scott, philosopher André Glucksmann, and Jana Hybášková, a leading MEP and democracy activist.
The signatories call on the IOC to allow Olympic athletes to be able to “learn about the real situation in China and to point out human rights violations freely whenever and wherever in line with their conscience”. They also call on all Olympians “to use this liberty to support those whose freedoms, even at the time of the Olympics, are denied by the Chinese government”.
Wei Jingsheng was one of several Chinese dissidents and human rights activists – along with Harry Wu, Rebiya Kadeer, Dr. Sasha Gong, and Bob Fu – who recently met U.S. President George W. Bush in the White House. He told him that his attendance at the Beijing Olympics is “a mistake”, but suggested that he use every opportunity to highlight human rights and the plight of political prisoners, religious believers and ethnic minorities.
But the President’s Freedom Agenda rhetoric is ill-suited to partially free countries like China, says one observer. China’s “bifurcated authoritarianism” is an attractive model as “more and more places — from Russia to Dubai to Cambodia — are beginning to embrace the combination of political repression and economic excitement rolled into one,” argues lawyer Ying Ma.
Political rhetoric should reflect this nuance. “It should speak more often of the grit and persistence, the dreams and aspirations of those who pursue economic freedom, not just those who fight for political liberalization,” she argues. “The key is to do more to convince individuals in the former category that they too should be or should support those in the latter.”
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