Is This The Olympic Spirit?

In a previous post, we spoke of China's continuing complicity in the genocide in Darfur as well as the country's terrible track record for human rights within its own borders. Just this week, Human Rights First published a new report that argues that since 2004 China has supplied the Sudan with 90% of its small arms and munitions, which have resulted in over 200,000 dead and 2.5 million refugees over the past five years.

But, even more troubling are reports coming out of China that the Olympics themselves are being used as an excuse for further human rights violations within the country.

China has used the Olympics to forcibly evict hundreds of thousands of its citizens from their houses to "develop" facilities for the Games as well as "revitalize" Beijing. Chinese activists who have attempted to stand against these forcible evictions have been threatened, tortured, and jailed. Just next week, leading Chinese human rights activist, Hu Jia, will face trial in Beijing on charges of "incitement to subvert state power" for writing articles critical of the Chinese government for foreign news agencies.

And, now, our own government has become complicit in China's human rights abuses.

Not only have we failed to place sanctions on China for their terrible record on human rights, but this past week, the United States "upgraded" China's human rights rating from "world's worst" to "poor." The State Department argued that the "upgrade" had nothing to do with the upcoming Olympics. But, Amnesty International spokesman, T. Kumar, called the timing of the State Department announcement "troubling," particularly since President Bush will visit China for the Olympic Games.

So, despite the fact that human rights abuses in China have actually increased with the coming of the Olympic Games, the United States has now given China the more innocuous rating of "poor" in human rights and have included them in the following category:

"Authoritarian countries that are undergoing economic reform [and] have experienced rapid social change but have not undertaken democratic political reform and continue to deny their citizens basic human rights and fundamental freedoms."

This category seems especially ironic given that the "economic reform" and "rapid social change" in China appear to be the most recent driving forces behind the increase in human rights violations.

But, sadly, China is not the only country to have embraced the "Olympic Spirit" of human rights abuses. A new report by the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE), based in Geneva, asserts that over two million people have been displaced from their homes over the past 20 years to make way for the Olympics.

China is by far the worst abuser in terms of forcible removals. COHRE estimates that 1.25 million people have already been removed from their homes in China and another 250,000 people will be "relocated" before the start of the Olympics this summer. But, in preparation for the Olympic Games in Seoul in 1988, South Korea displaced upwards of 720,000 people and, through "gentrification" and "development," 30,000 people were removed from their homes in Atlanta prior to the Olympics in 1996.

It is sad that the "Olympic Spirit" is being so tarnished.

Yet, it appears that the International Olympic Committee, Olympic athletes, world leaders, and the media are willing to turn a blind eye to the human rights abuses that will become the new legacy of the Olympics.

I just hope that as folks tune in their televisions to the pageantry of this summer's Games that they will remember the 1.5 million people, who, through no choice of their own, made this supposed spectacle of peace and friendship possible.

For me, the Olympic Flame has fizzled. But, perhaps it was about time, given that the torch relay was first introduced to the modern games by Carl Diem for the Berlin Game of 1936 as part of Hilter's propaganda machine for the Third Reich.

Irony is never lost on history.

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