By Patrick Goodenough
CNSNews.com International Editor
The International Olympic Committee ended its last executive board meeting for the year without mentioning growing calls for the movement to address human rights in China ahead of next summer’s Beijing Olympics.
Advocacy groups concerned about ongoing rights violations in China increasingly are turning their attention to the IOC, which they say should use its leverage with Beijing to press for change.
In Strasbourg Thursday, the European Parliament asked the IOC to carry out and make public an assessment of whether China has lived up to the commitments it made to the IOC in 2001, when it submitted its bid to host the games.
The resolution, which passed unanimously, cited repression of ethnic and religious groups, journalists and human rights advocates, and censorship and surveillance of the Internet. It called for a moratorium on executions during the games, and asked China to lift an order prohibiting specified categories of people from visiting for the Olympics.
(According to a purported government document made public by a human rights group last month, blacklisted categories include journalists who work for media organizations that are “hostile to China,” political dissidents, Tibetan “secessionists,” and anyone with “serious grievances” against the Communist Party.)
Also on Thursday, one of China’s best-known dissidents, Wei Jingsheng, delivered a petition to the IOC headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, calling on IOC president Jacques Rogge to speak out.
The IOC’s stance, spelled out most recently by Rogge in a meeting in Spain early this month, is that “the IOC is not a political but a sports organization.”
But Wei has pointed to the stand it took against apartheid, barring South Africa from participating from 1964 until 1992, when the system of legal racial segregation was being dismantled. A similar point was made last month at a European Parliament human rights subcommittee meeting by Hungarian lawmaker Pal Schmitt, who happens to be an Olympic fencing gold medallist and one of the IOC’s 144 members.
“It is time for a political statement,” he was quoted as saying. “We can’t just close our ears to what’s happening [in China]. We did it for the apartheid regime, so let’s do it again.”
Queries sent to the IOC headquarters this week drew no response by press time.
A number of rights groups have written to Rogge, challenging him on the issue.
Last September, Human Rights in China (HRIC) director Sharon Hom wrote to Rogge, requesting that the IOC disclose the host city contract signed with Beijing, which describes the rights and obligations of the host city and the IOC.
“You have expressed confidence that Beijing will host a successful games and that BOCOG [the Beijing organizing committee] ‘will fulfill these requirements and obligations of the host city contract.’ Without public disclosure of this contract, however, the public cannot hold the IOC or BOCOG accountable to fulfilling these requirements and obligations,” she said.
Hom acknowledged that “there is no magic bullet for complex human rights problems,” but said, “with greater transparency and accountability, the games could help generate lasting improvements and launch reforms beyond 2008.”
HRIC program officer Carol Wang said Thursday that the IOC had faxed a response that “steered clear of any mention of human rights.”
Wang provided a copy of the response. In it, the IOC said it “believes that organized sport can help bring positive developments from within Olympic Games host countries,” and added that the IOC takes “a patient and quiet approach.”
It did not mention the host city contract, but said that the Beijing bid process dealt with organizing a successful games; it “did not cover commitments on broader national social or political issues.”
“We understand that you would like to see further progress in China more quickly,” it said. “We believe, however, that the Beijing Olympic Games are an opportunity to open a new door to China to benefit its citizens and its relationships with other nations.”
‘Giving Olympics to Beijing was a political choice’
Media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders has also written to the IOC, most recently two week ago, when it drew Rogge’s attention to reports that the Chinese authorities were compiling dossiers on journalists planning to cover the games and would ban certain categories of visitors from entering the country.
The letter cited cases of harassment of foreign journalists and repression of Chinese journalists, as well as a government order to Chinese media to avoid publishing “negative” stories on issues relating to the Olympics.
The group said Rogge’s silence was making the abuses possible.
“The organization you head is constantly trumpeting the progress being made with the work on the Beijing games infrastructure but it has not made any public statement of concern about the lack of freedom of expression, which will undermine the work of the media and the transparency that is needed for the games,” it said.
Vincent Brossel of Reporters Without Borders said Thursday that in its replies to the group’s letters IOC staffers have said “that they are not a political organization so they cannot interfere in internal matters.”
“But when they gave the Olympics to Beijing it was a political choice and Beijing even committed to political things like improving the human rights standard,” he said.
Brossel called the IOC’s public silence on the matter shocking.
“They miss a great opportunity to put pressure on the Chinese government to improve its record on human rights and especially press freedom.”
This week, Brossel and four colleagues were denied visas to visit mainland China, where they had planned a demonstration in Beijing on Monday, International Human Rights Day.
They held their protest in Hong Kong instead, unfurling a large banner depicting the Olympic rings transformed into handcuffs.
“In view of the IOC’s silence and the Chinese government’s refusal to keep its promise to improve respect for rights and freedoms, we have a duty to draw attention to the disastrous situation for free speech in China,” the organization said in a statement.
Other groups which have addressed the IOC on the issue this week include Amnesty International, which quoted Olympic Charter principles stressing “respect for universal fundamental ethical principles” and “the preservation of human dignity.”
“If this Olympic Games results in one innocent Chinese person losing their freedom to ensure [a] successful games, then they are not founded upon any moral basis,” Chinese human rights attorney Gao Zhisheng said during a press conference in Strasbourg on Tuesday.
