Olympic Cowardice

Filed under: Asia, Bejing 2008, China, Olympic Games — Michael van der Galien, Editor-in-Chief on April 11, 2008 @ 3:00 pm CEST

‘Athletes who display Tibetan flags at Olympic venues — including in their own rooms — could be expelled from this summer’s Games in Beijing under anti-propaganda rules,’ the Times (of London) reports. Jacques Rogge, the president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) hilariously said that ‘competitors were free to express their political views but faced sanctions if they indulged in propaganda.’

“No, they’re all free to express their political views. Nobody will stop them. But when they do, they’ll be expelled.”

That sounds reasonable doesn’t it?

A couple of days ago, Rogge tried to win over Westerners by saying that China should behave well in Tibet. China responded by telling Rogge that he should not mix politics with sports. The result? Rogge backs down.

But that’s not all, via Hot Air comes the following:

Your time is better spent on this travesty yesterday in San Francisco, in which Gavin Newsom’s best laid plans to avoid embarrassing the Chinese — including an eleventh-hour re-routing of the torch relay to keep it away from protesters — were thwarted by torch-bearer Majora Carter. She had a small Tibetan flag stashed up her sleeve; when they passed her the torch, she pulled it out and the Chinese “security” team traveling with them pounced. Watch as one of the American cops shows her how they do it in Beijing, giving her a gratuitous shove into the crowd to keep her away from the communist propaganda pageant she was momentarily a part of. She’s wrong on the law, to be sure; her free speech rights don’t entitle her to violate the contract she signed before participating. But watching U.S. cops enforce Chinese policy is so disgusting, Newsom should have simply canceled the event lest he be forced to do it. Exit quotation: “Because we’re America, we can do that.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=la43HAPqCNk

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1 Claudia

April 11, 2008 @ 4:34 pm CEST

The big mistake was giving the Olympics to China in the first place. Whose next, Sudan?

The players will be tightly controlled, though I hope some brave souls find a way to make their views known when the cameras are on them. What would be especially good would be widespread audience rebellion. You can try to arrest or otherwise make life difficult for people whose entire sports career is on the line, but not even China would dare jail or beat thousands of mostly American, Australian, Canadian, Japanese and European visitors.