CHINA'S OLYMPIC WAR---ER, WARS
by Wina Sturgeon
Take one secretive government that totally controls its citizens---award them the Olympics and expect them to change. Then be surprised when that government doesn't change, and tries to control the world's media, athletes and visitors.
The news is slowly trickling out: China is trying to dictate what the world's media can broadcast and write about the Olympics. This is not what the IOC bargained for. In addition, it is not what the Chinese Olympic Organizing Committee promised when bidding for the Games.
NBC, one of the major broadcasters of the two weeks of glory, has paid millions of dollars to be there, and collected millions more from advertisers. Now, in the familiar name of "national security," NBC and other media giants are being told what they can and can't say and show. For example, a source told Adventure Sports Weekly, on the condition of anonymity, that the Chinese are "totally spooked" by the possibility of athletes speaking out about Tibet or China's human rights record. The international protests during the Olympic Torch Relay left their Olympic Organizing Committee paranoid about any protests being shown to the world. According to our source, the Chinese are trying to control every aspect of television coverage; an impossibility given the fluid nature of the Olympic Games.
The big worry is that protests, against the law in China without a "permit," will break out and have to be quelled by the military, and the violence of such confrontations will present an image China does not want the world to see.
One inflammatory site is Tiananmen Square, still remembered for the lone man standing up to oncoming tanks sent to break up a massive protest. Hundreds of Chinese citizens were killed, and the site has since become a standard ground for protests. It is also the site for the start of the Olympic marathon, and there are hints that, because of fear of protests, live television coverage of the marathon start will not be allowed.
There are also supposedly half a million volunteers, 500,000 Chinese, assigned to handle security for the event, though another source referred to them as spies. China has also allegedly sharply cut back on the number of visas being handed out.
Aside from the expected protests against China's actions in Tibet and support of the factions committing genocide in Darfur, there may be other protests being planned over China's large organ transplant business, where organs are supposedly obtained from the alleged killing of prisoners arrested on flimsy charges. Both Canada and Britain have come out and directly accused China of overseeing a huge commercial operation of providing transplant organs to international recipients who can obtain any organ they wish with little or no waiting time.
The IOC is said to be frantically trying to negotiate some resolution to Beijing's authoritarian attempts to control Olympic coverage and visitor behavior; with many questioning why this important event was awarded to as non-democratic a nation as China, especially after the 2002 Salt Lake Olympic scandal where it was revealed that IOC members demanded bribes for votes.
This story will grow as the Games, now less than two months away, get closer. Perhaps the biggest story of the 2008 Beijing Olympics will be what happens when a democratic world comes to visit an authoritarian country, and even those who are not there are watching.