China must heed cries for change

By John Canzano

April 13, 2008 - T he Chinese government enabled the genocide in Darfur, suppressed religious freedom, persecuted the Falun Gong, cracked down in Tibet, played diplomatic games with Myanmar, muzzled the press, and curtailed basic human rights.

What?

They didn't expect a little protesting?

What we ended up with this week were San Francisco police officers running alongside the Olympic torch relay, protecting the flame (a symbol of peace) in human-shield formation. And right about now I'm thinking what we have here is an opportunity.

I've covered two summer Olympics, and on the final day of competition in Sydney and Athens, each time, I filed a column on the people who participated in those Games.

Those Olympics were about people.

They were about Rulon Gardner and Marion Jones and Michael Johnson and an aboriginal woman named Cathy Freeman, who won gold in the 400 meters for Australia and became the final Olympic torch-bearer there. And they were about Maurice Green and the Dream Team's flop and what Paul Hamm should have done with his gold medal in men's gymnastics.

People ruled those Games.

This summer, protests will.

While I'd hope that the competition in Beijing would be breathtaking and leave us talking about people, I suspect the unrest we're seeing now isn't going to stop until the flame leaves Beijing in late August.

When the International Olympic Committee awarded Beijing the Olympics seven years ago, it did so after expressing that it wanted to encourage China to live up to the human rights standards written into the Olympic charter.

China mostly nodded, then went about preparing for the Olympics, building venues and improving transportation. There was an air-quality study and a housing study, and they're forcing residents to go on vacation to relieve congestion. Scientists there also plan on shooting chemicals into the sky in the weeks before the opening ceremony, which will make it rain and result in a clearer sky for the world to see. Also, they've set up a hotline for visitors and residents to report examples of poor English translation on street signs and menus around the Olympic city.

Welcome to Beijing, basically.

Now, Beijing, welcome to the rest of the world.

Because there have been protests in London, Paris, Greece and the United States. And the British prime minister and Germany's chancellor announced they intend to skip the opening ceremony. Others, including President Bush, are trying to decide what they need to do.

Meanwhile, state-run television in China is busy cutting away from the protests, acting as if none of it is happening, and it's become obvious to the rest of the world that the 2008 Olympics are secondary to the games going on behind the scenes.

China named the torch route "Journey of Harmony."

It's sponsored by Coca-Cola, Samsung and Lenovo. The journey doesn't feel harmonious when you hear police in London detained 37 protestors, including one ambitious guy who brought a fire extinguisher.

The irony is that the Olympic torch relay was first introduced in 1936. The Germans invented it to help glorify the Third Reich. Now the flame has become a rallying point for protestors who are interested in calling attention to the ugly sores of a communist country that needs to change its social policy.

A large portion of China's $1.3 billion Olympic security budget is going to be spent on activist espionage.

Also, the United States government sent a release to American journalists credentialed to cover the Olympics, warning that the civil rights we enjoy in this country will not necessarily be respected in Beijing. The statement warned that your hotel rooms are subject to entry, and that your conversations, including those on the telephone, are not private.

Maybe you love the long jump or basketball or the gymnastics floor exercise. Maybe you're inspired by watching a display of unity, mutual support and collective identity along with all the athleticism that you get in an Olympics. But I challenge you to not get charged up when you hear that the world, in 2008, is more interested in social change than the hammer throw.

One of the big mysteries so far has been trying to figure out how China, a country that mutes its citizens, is going to react when journalists covering the Olympics are busy rummaging around Beijing, telling the world what they see.

The hope is that the Beijing Games would end up being a progressive experience for China. That the social pressure, combined with the IOC's charter, combined with protests and basic cultural evolution, would cause positive change in China.

That hope is what the Beijing Olympics are already about.

John Canzano: 503-294-5065; JohnCanzano@aol.com To read his blog, go to http://blog.oregonlive.com/ johncanzano; Catch him on the radio on "The Bald-Faced Truth" from 6-8 p.m. weekdays on KXL (750)

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