Comment: Olympic torch protests
Beijing Olympics: An impossible mix of sport and politics
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Monday, 07, Apr 2008 02:55
One of the most naive statements made after the Olympic torch procession yesterday was that "sport and politics don't mix".
Tim Henman and a number of other famous faces from the world of sport and entertainment were quick to repeat this statement as their excuse for taking part in a procession that was always going to attract protests from people angry that China was ever awarded the Olympic Games.
China, like the Soviet Union before it, represents the antithesis of what we have all grown up to believe are the Olympic values, never mind the fact that the Olympics have their origins in ancient Greece, which for most Europeans represents the birthplace of civilisation and democracy.
China will, of course, hit back by saying its civilisation is older than most if not all others, so will do what it chooses. It will also argue that Tibet is in its backyard and has been under its protection for an almost unbroken 300 year period. It is unlikely to care that the rest of the world would like to see Tibet as a separate sovereign nation. Not only is Tibet strategically important to the Chinese but it has since 1720 been an annexe of China - prior to this Tibet paid tribute to the Mongol Empire to protect its borders. It was only the revolution in China in 1911 - which brought an end to the political power of China's last emperor - that halted the Chinese presence in Tibet and then only for a few decades.
Regardless of sport and politics, the Olympics and politics have been intertwined since the 1936 Berlin Olympics, to expect anything different now is at the very least callow if not downright stupid. As for the protests and protestors themselves, the only thing they are likely to achieve is to highlight for a brief time the fact that China has a lousy human rights record and is in a country it probably should not be in.
Many Chinese would say that makes China no different to the US or Britain. And if Britain is still in Iraq in four years time it would seem just to expect the same level of protest in 2012.
Matt West
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Comment by Gustavo Montes De Oca
Apologists for our complicity in the Chinese regime's brutality say that sports and politics shouldn't mix and use that slogan to condemn the pro-Tibet protestors that lined the London streets on Monday.
However, it was not the protesters who politicised the torch ceremony in the first place, but the politicians.
Eager to use the occasion to demonstrate their fawning loyalty to the commercial partner that is China, UK politicians protected the Chinese propaganda tour, offering thousands of police officers and the sanctuary of Downing Street.
By embracing the Chinese 'Harmony Tour' these politicians legitimised, in the name of their electorate, the crimes and oppression that the Chinese government has meted out in Tibet.
And, when citizens feel that politicians misuse the power vested in them, they have the right to protest, as they did on Sunday. Thousands aired their displeasure that their approval had been given to the torch relay.
Not only did the government open its arms to let China use London as a backdrop for the story it is selling to its citizens - one of global acceptance of its actions in Tibet - ministers even engineered the photo ops.
In front of Whitehall, the pro-Tibet protestors were kept out of a photo shoot in which the Union Jack and Chinese banners, not to mention those of corporate sponsor Samsung, flew side by side.
Tessa Jowell, seeking to minimise the damage to the government's reputation, said that it was a tribute to the UK and free speech that protests could take place, but failed to notice that the UK government had contributed to the stifling of free speech and had armed the Chinese state news agencies images with which to lie to their people.
While boos may have rung out as athletes jogged past with the flame aloft, in articulating their arguments, most protesters were clear that the athletes were not the scapegoats.
They also made clear that Chinese people were not the targets of the protests, but that it was their undemocratic and oppressive government.