Public support Olympic boycott, new poll shows
Friday, 01 Aug 2008 00:01
The public want an Olympic boycott, the poll suggests
The public support a boycott of the Olympic games by prime minister Gordon Brown, a new
politics.co.uk poll suggests.
With the games due to start in a matter of days, the poll shows massive discontent with the way Mr Brown has handled the Olympics issue and anger at the decision to grant China in the first place.
When asked about Mr Brown's decision to greet the Olympic torch outside Downing Street, 86 per cent of respondents said they thought Mr Brown had handled the situation badly. Opposition to Mr Brown attending the opening ceremony as a protest against Chinese human rights violations stood at a similar level.
Disagreement with the Olympic Committee's decision to grant the games to China stood at 79 per cent.
Respondents' faith in British athletics made for similarly downcast reading, with only 26 per cent of users predicting British medals, while the exact same numbers thought team UK would come back empty handed. Forty-eight per cent of people said they were unsure.
Early promises from Beijing about an improvement in their human rights record and a liberalisation of society have proved ill-founded.
Foreign journalists covering the Olympics arrived to discover the unrestricted internet access they had been promised was nowhere to be seen. Instead, sites on banned spiritual movement Falun Gong, the Tibetan government in exile or the Tiananmen Square massacre were blocked.
Meanwhile International warned this week the Chinese government was using the advent of the Games to 'clean up' Beijing's street through re-education labour camps and drug rehabilitation programmes.
Tim Hancock, campaigns director at Amnesty International UK, said China had "betrayed" the core values of the Olympics.
"They told the world that the Olympics would help bring human rights to China, but the government continues to persecute and punish those who speak out for human rights ahead of the Games," he said.
The opening ceremony of the Games takes place on the August 8th. A Korean journalist managed to film highly secretive rehearsals for the ceremony yesterday, risking a lengthy prison sentence.