THE call by the president of the International Olympic Committee, Jacques Rogge, for a rapid and peaceful resolution of the problems in Tibet will have surprised many — not just the Chinese who must be quietly seething at his intervention. After all, politics are supposed to have no place in the Olympics. But here, for the first time, the president of the IOC is making a link between the Games and politics. On the face of it, the move is unprecedented.
In fact, the view that the Games have nothing to do with politics is a fantasy. They are, after all, an expression of collaboration and cooperation between different peoples who live under different political systems. That makes them supremely political. Moreover, the fact that they are supposed to denote a higher morality — that humanity can be above politics — makes them especially prone to being targeted by those with political agendas that, to their supporters, have a strong moral element. Thus it was in the 1936 Berlin Olympics when the morality of allowing the Games to be played in a dictatorship was fiercely debated, especially in the US. It was there in the boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Of course, there will be those who say that China’s use of the Olympics to showcase how much it has changed and opened up, at least economically, is itself political. Possibly. The fact that the Games are a PR exercise for the new China is not in itself serious, however. Almost all the Games over the past century have been PR exercises — for the country where they were held and for the host city hoping to attract investment. What is serious, though, is the way the 2008 Games are shaping up to be one of the most contentious in modern history — and there is no sign of events calming down.
It is China’s misfortune that it has a number of issues seen by its detractors as moral ones; thus they feel justified using the Olympics against the Chinese. Tibet is regarded in many parts of the world as a freedom issue, the arrest of political activists as a human rights issue, China’s backing for the repressive military regime in Burma and for the Sudanese government (with its problems in Darfur) another human rights matter. Beijing’s attempts to curtail criticism by insisting its policies are its own affairs cut no ice. Human rights questions know no borders these days.
The Games will still go ahead despite the problems. They will surely be among the most spectacular ever. There will be no boycotts (apart perhaps at the opening event, but that is hardly serious) — unless, that is, something goes seriously wrong in Tibet between now and August or other political activists are rounded up and jailed. China has to be wary of the former and careful about the latter. The Tibetan freedom movement has managed to wrong-foot it over the Olympics and will probably try to hijack them again. A measured and diplomatic response is what is needed if they and their supporters can do so. Anything stronger will surely backfire.
