The International Olympic Committee will announce today (Australian time) its decision on where the 2008 Olympic Games will be held. It is likely the IOC will choose Beijing. If so it will be an appalling decision.
The Olympic Games is not just another sporting event, like a swimming meeting or a football carnival. The Olympic Games by its own motto and own aspirations stands for universal human aspirations that go beyond a sporting contest. In the time of the ancient Greeks, when the first games were held, it was a time when the various cities of Greece put aside war and came together in a contest of physical and spiritual human excellence. So when the IOC makes its decision it must look beyond the mere sporting contest. It must look beyond whether the several cities seeking the right to host the Games are physically capable of holding the Games in terms of sporting venues, transport and accommodation. The IOC should also look at the spiritual fitness of the host city.
When the IOC looks at Beijing it may well conclude that despite the smog and the mediocre transport systems and sporting facilities that the Chinese regime in the next seven years will be able to create the physical infrastructure to hold the Games. But it must look beyond this. At present, and for the foreseeable future, Beijing is also the seat of government of one of the most politically repressive regimes on earth. The Chinese regime has brutally repressed the religious freedom of those who wish to embrace the Falun Gong movement. It has imprisoned and executed – – often without trial – – those who criticise it on political grounds. There are no rights of self-determination for minorities in China, particularly those who seek independence for Tibet.
If Beijing gets to host the Olympic Games, the Chinese regime will not portray it as merely the location of a sporting event in one of its cities. Rather, it will make the most propaganda value of the Games and portray the decision to host them in Beijing as an endorsement of the Chinese political system.
It is probably too much to expect that the IOC with its long history of corruption and pragmatism to even understand the importance of the symbolism of awarding host status of the world’s most significant sporting event. However, even at the 11th hour Olympic nations should impress upon the IOC the importance to the Olympic ideal of not hosting the Games in a nation whose government invariably acts in a way inimical to a those ideals.
It would be an utter obscenity for beach volleyball to be played on a court constructed in at Tienanmen Square, the very place where Chinese troops gunned down unarmed students and protesters who merely aspired for political freedom-an event the Chinese regime does not apologise for. And how can any nation with a conscience send a football team to China for the Olympic Games when many of the matches will be played on a pitch constructed on the site of a stadium where many innocent people met their deaths at mass executions because they merely wanted to express their political and religious beliefs.
Some have argued that the granting of the Olympic Games to China will help the pursuit of human rights. They argue that the Olympic Games will open China up to scrutiny by human rights groups and the media in general.
History does not support their argument. Nazi Germany was awarded the Olympic Games in 1936. Far from exposing the Nazi regime to liberalising pressure, the event became a propaganda exercise to justify and legitimise Nazi government. It is in it inevitable that China would use the Olympic Games in the same way.
The better way to attempt to effect change in China is to not give it the moral imprimatur that comes with the awarding of the Olympic Games.