Activists Call for Beijing Olympics Boycott

By WAI MOE
The Irrawaddy News
www.irrawaddy.org
February 5, 2008

As the Beijing Summer Olympic Games 2008 nears its opening ceremony on August 8, human rights activists have launched a campaign to boycott the games; one of the main reasons being China’s support for the Burmese military junta.

A Web site, beijingolympicsboycott.com, lists ten reasons to boycott the Beijing Olympics, including China’s involvement in Darfur and its human rights record.

The Web site has cleverly remodeled the insignia of the Olympics—the five interconnected rings—to read “NO” in each of the rings.

Regarding Burma, the Web site states: “China funds the Burmese regime, arms it and protests it from international pressure. China builds Burma’s roads and buys its oil, gas and timber, but China won't prod the Burmese government to allow even basic reforms. China uses its veto power to block the UN Security Council from doing anything meaningful for the Burmese people.”

A lobby group based in Washington, DC, the US Campaign for Burma recently said in a report titled “China’s Support Blocks International Diplomacy and Keeps Burma’s Regime in Power,” that China is one of the largest arms suppliers to the Burmese military junta. Since 1989, China has provided the Burmese regime with weapons and military equipment valued at over US $2 billion. “Arms shipments continue to this day,” said the group.

The group reported that in return for the Chinese government’s protection, the Burmese regime discount natural gas from the world market rate of around $7.30 per million BTU (British Thermal Units), to just $4.28 per million BTU for the energy-hungry Chinese government.

“China is the only country with the ability to shield Burma’s military junta from international intervention,” said the group. “China vetoed a peaceful UN Security Council resolution— that had garnered enough votes to pass—that would have strengthened the [UN] Secretary-General’s mandate to resolving the crisis in Burma.”

Chinese intellectuals have also joined in the debate. A few days later after the brutal crackdown on Buddhist monk-led demonstrations in Burma, Chinese bloggers condemned their government’s support for the junta.

A Chinese pro-democracy activist, Fang Jue, said in an article on Web site wenxuecity.com that “China is responsible for the Burmese dictatorship—China is the only country who can speak to the Burmese military regime, but the Chinese government chose to hold back the UN Security Council’s action to Burma.”

Xia Ming, a professor of political science at the City University of New York said at the time that China does not want Burma’s situation to get more intensified and does not want the Burmese military government to be overthrown by the protestors either.

On September 29, The Washington Post warned in its editorial of a potential Olympic boycott over Chinese foreign policy, particular the Burma issue. It noted that China must have realized that one unintended consequence of hosting the 2008 Olympics is unprecedented global scrutiny of Beijing’s retrograde foreign policy.

“The failure of President Hu Jintao’s leadership to forthrightly condemn the repression [in Burma] has had the effect of giving the junta a green light,” said The Post, concluding: “Burma’s saffron-robed monks will join Darfur’s refugees in haunting the Beijing Olympics—which are on their way to becoming a monument to an emerging superpower’s immorality.”