Wicked Game

There's been a lot of talk about cancelling participation of official country representatives at the opening ceremony of the Beijing 2008 Olympics, especially in Europe I suppose. What's that all about, suddenly closely connecting sports and politics? An aggressive campaign from Amnesty International, an organization that I otherwise respect and once was a member of , claims that China have promised to improve human rights in order to become this year's Olympic host. No documentation of such promises have been presented though, and the IOC spokesperson says that IOC is a non-political organization. The only promise made by China regards the freedom of foreign press to operate in China during the Olympics, and a decree to that effect has been made by the Chinese government. The effectiveness of the decree remains to be seen, of course, but I think we can rely on the 20,000 accredited press people to let us know if any unreasonable hindrances should be present.

While there are unarguably problems with human rights issues in China, there's no doubt China has seen immense improvements on many fronts since 2001 (where Beijing as 2008 Olympic city was announced), such as improvements for migrant workers, combating of corruption and improvements in the judiciary system. China is on the right track, and China is rightfully proud to host this year's Olympic games. The campaigning by AI to connect the issues of human rights and the Olympic games is completely untimely. There is absolutely no reason to induce neither athletes nor country officials with bad conscience about participating. Did AI try to boycott previous Olympic games in US cities because of US violations of human rights (executions is one of AI's main criticism of China)? Should 2016 candidate Madrid face questions about Basque independence?

The way to encourage further improvements of human rights in China is to support and to maintain a dialogue with the Chinese that work to improve the conditions within China as well as with the Chinese authorities. A boycott of the Olympic opening ceremony will only serve to further nationalism and xenophobic views, as can to some extent be seen after the very negative coverage in western media regarding human rights in Tibet. It would be tragic and counter-productive if the Western world in misunderstood or disinformed concern for human rights in China would nourish Chinese nationalism and isolationism by solely focussing on the negative stories about China.

The way that the Chinese authorities have handled the devastating Sichuan earthquake may have shifted sympathies in a more favourable direction for China. Hopefully the folly and shrill voices of a few months back of the likes of French president Sarkozy and the Danish Conservative People's Party will be unheeded. At least the Danish Parliament on May 22nd voted against a governmental boycot of the opening ceremony.