Beijing Olympics come at a high price
Imagine, then, if two million people were forcibly evicted, imprisoned and beaten if they demanded restitution.
I imagine that wouldn’t go over well. When Beijing won their bid for the 2008 Olympics, they said it showed a new era for China, acceptance into the modern way of life, and that it would improve conditions for the Chinese people and lower human rights violations. Two million people who have lost their homes and forty thousand who have been imprisoned and beaten for staging quiet protests would have something else to say about that. An estimated two hundred thousand are still living on the streets, unable to find temporary housing and not able to stay with family. Two hundred thousand. That is nearly ten times the amount of people who live in my hometown. Imagine if the town of BumbleBee Indiana (fictional name) were to be ENTIRELY DEMOLISHED to build an Olympic stadium, the townspeople were offered no restitution or temporary housing, and were beaten for protesting?
The international community would not be silent.
I cannot tell you all how hard it was to find any reporting whatsoever on this topic. The one Washington post article simply cited “a continuation of human rights violations” with no specifics. All I could find were blog posts and one good article from the UK. (thank you SweetMisery for bringing this to my attention and Carol for the good link.)
I find it bitterly humorous that a celebration of the world’s unity and friendly competition would come at the price of such heinous violations of basic rights to housing, compensation and due process. I also find it bitterly humorous that due to America’s own sketchy acknowledgment of human rights for prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, we may have no leverage for voicing our disdain.
Please, think long and hard about what it means to be human. Think about the rights of our fellow man. Think about what it means to be a member of the world stage. People are people, regardless of their situation. People have rights, because we want to have rights we need to acknowledge that these rights exist for all people. The fact that China owns our debt shouldn’t keep the United States from speaking, and the fact that we are afraid shouldn’t be a good enough reason to violate the rights of others, even if they are possibly terrorists and enemies of ours.
Some links to more information about Beijing’s human rights violations:
2,000,000 lose homes due to Olympics
Beijing Slum Demolitions
Homes Forcibly Destroyed without Prior Warning
Demolition destroys history, a way of life
hetta replied:
Man, and you know, from what I’ve heard the monstrocities they are building for this Olympic Games are not in compliance with safety standards– an earthquake, terrorist, etc..buffet if you will. I don’t know how things “stand” at the moment, but as an athelete I think I’d skip this one.
Enjoy your book and Pepsi! What a nice guy
February 23, 2008 at 4:23 pm. Permalink.
@mmonyte replied:
The British Olympic Association has tried to insert a clause into athletes’ contracts to prevent them commenting on contentious issues. Fortunately an outcry has caused them to re-think the issue, but you can see where things are going. (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=513362&in_page_id=1770&ct=5)
Almost all countries that host the Olympics engage in activities they woul rather draw a veil over. In Athens in 2004 they rounded up all stray dogs for execution. Some animal welfare charities in other countries got to hear about this and went out there, and rescued many of the doomed animals (which is how my sister came to own her current mutt)
And then there is the situation in Zimbabwe, where today the evil dictator Robert Mugabe celebrated his birthday whilst his subjects starve. It has been suggested that there should be a sporting boycott (OK this mainly involves cricket so will probably have gone unreported in the USA), however the sporting authorities have resisted this, which in my view is a racist position, because if Mugabe was white, there is no question at all that his regime would be totally isolated.
February 23, 2008 at 10:42 pm. Permalink.
shush replied:
Hetta: I heard that the US team is bringing in their own food and chefs because of food safety standards. Yikes! (The book and Pepsi have been marvelous!)
@mmonyte: wow- thanks for the info and the link. The more I discover about all of this, the more sick it makes me to my stomach. I’d heard about the dogs in Athens, and as I said even the US had questionable practices when they hosted. *sighs*
February 25, 2008 at 2:55 pm. Permalink.
@mmonyte replied:
Whilst still on the subject of China, there is the topic of their treatment of Falun Gong: http://www.religioustolerance.org/falungong.htm
Precedents for an Olympic boycott include:-
1976 (Montreal) 25 African countries boycott the games in protest at New Zealand’s sporting links with apartheid era South Africa http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/july/17/newsid_3555000/3555450.stm
1980 (Moscow) US & 60 others stay away or (like the UK) send “unofficial” teams in protest at Russian occupation of Afghanistan
1984 (Los Angeles) Russia, Cuba & 14 other nations boycott in retaliation for 1980
The bottom line remains that the IOC should never have awarded the games to Beijing in the first place.
February 27, 2008 at 10:31 pm. Permalink.
thatdudeyouknow replied:
Ooooh…. Olympics, olympics, olympics…
Remember that both communist Soviet as well as Nazi Germany have hosted the olympics. Why should China be different?
Are there any info of demolishing areas etc for those olympics? It would be interesting…
Hi, Shush. Amber referred me to you. I’m just looking around in the posts you recommended.
April 23, 2008 at 3:17 pm. Permalink.