By Kate Heartfield,
Canada boycotted the 1980 Olympics in Moscow to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Imagine, if you will, that the U.S.S.R. had somehow managed to pull off two incredible feats: sustain itself and conquer Afghanistan.
Imagine it ruled Afghanistan now, while raping its resources, trying to subvert its religious institutions, censoring and intimidating its people. Would we send our Canadian athletes to a new Moscow Olympics under those circumstances?
I don’t know, but I do know we’re sending our athletes to Beijing in 2008, despite the invasion of Tibet a half-century ago, and despite the continuing oppression there. China’s still moving in its own people to dispossess Tibetans of their homeland. It’s putting monks and nuns in jail for expressing their beliefs. When Tibetans try to leave by walking over mountain passes — call them defectors or refugees, or as China’s news agency does, “stowaways” — they are jailed or even shot.
Say what you will about the Cold War, at least it provided the appearance of moral clarity. We don’t even have that anymore. In the absence of a convenient ideological staring contest, how do Canadians find a moral position to take on the 2008 Olympic Games?
Well, there’s still time for a boycott of the Olympics, but I’m not holding my breath. Neither is Conservative Senator Consiglio Di Nino, a man who valiantly avoids buying anything made in China and keeps a Tibetan flag in his Parliament Hill office. His concern for the people of Tibet was born on a hiking trip in 1990.
“China should never have gotten the Olympics,” he says. “But we’ve got lemons, let’s make lemonade.”
Lemonade, in this case, is treating the Olympics as an opportunity to influence China to change. Really change. Morality can’t be satisfied with the standard bromides, the “frank discussions” about China’s “progress” on human rights.
March 10 is the anniversary of the Tibetan uprising of 1959. On that day, Tibetans took to the streets of Lhasa to prevent the Chinese from killing or abducting the Dalai Lama. He left the country soon after and hasn’t been back since.
For decades, he’s been asking the Chinese to negotiate true autonomy for Tibet, within China — a situation that could be analogous to a province within Canada.
It’s not an unreasonable demand by any means. And there has been some rapprochement over the years between China and the Tibetan government in exile. But China’s government always snaps back to its default position of paranoia, portraying the Dalai Lama as a dangerous separatist.
Canada’s Parliamentary Friends of Tibet, of which Mr. Di Nino is co-chair, has been encouraging other parliaments around the world to express support for a negotiated settlement between the Dalai Lama and the Chinese government.
Our House of Commons adopted a resolution to that effect on Feb. 15, introduced by New Democrat Peggy Nash. The European parliament also passed a resolution that day. Several countries are considering similar tactics. Mr. Di Nino’s motion in the Senate could be adopted this month.
“What we’ve been doing, myself and others around the world, is keeping the flame alive,” he says. I’m not sure if he intends the Olympic metaphor, but it’s apt anyway. There’s no better time than the Olympics to speak about the ideals the torch is supposed to symbolize: peace among peoples and respect for the human spirit.
The government of China hates to be embarrassed; nonetheless, I don’t expect this round of parliamentary resolutions will be enough to make it see reason. There may be no way for the outside world to make that government see reason, at least no way that’s politically palatable. But that doesn’t mean the outside world can’t light a fire underneath the government.
“I think the Chinese people will likely make this happen one day,” says Mr. Di Nino about Tibetan autonomy.
If he’s right, the Olympic Games could provide the world with the perfect Trojan Horse — only instead of invaders, out would pour the most annoying guests imaginable.
The international media could persist in asking unwelcome questions, the dignitaries could make peace and freedom the main themes of every speech, the athletes could speak of censorship, of Taiwan and Tibet and the Uighurs and China’s support of evil regimes around the world. As much as the government of China will try, it can’t possibly manage everyone and everything. It’s time to plead with the people of China, to tell them that their government is doing great harm in their name.
What’s Beijing going to do, kick us out?
