|
|
NEW ZEALAND ATHLETES MUST BOYCOTT THE 2008 OLYMPICS IN BEIJING, CHINA
While China continues to oppress the people of Tibet, New Zealand sportspeople must put aside any selfish quest for glory
at the 2008 propaganda exercise which will take place in Beijing.
Thursday
August 26, 2:27 PM BEIJING (AFP)
- Reporters Without Borders launched a website calling for a boycott of the Beijing 2008 Olympics over the human rights record
of "one of the world's bloodiest dictatorships". The
Paris-based media watchdog said Thursday China had failed to improve its rights record since being controversially awarded
the Games in 2001. History has shown that totalitarian
regimes are more sensitive to a balance of power than to 'constructive dialogue', the group said on the website, www.boycottbeijing2008.net. A boycott therefore seems the only strategy to force
Chinese authorities to respect human rights before 2008. It
urged people to email the United Nations to protest Beijing hosting the Games and called on the UN to publicly get behind
the campaign. The Olympic movement was discredited in
1936, when it allowed the Nazis to make the Games a spectacle to glorify the Third Reich, said the group. In 1980, in Moscow, the IOC suffered a terrible defeat when more than 50 countries
boycotted the Olympics. The Netherlands, Germany, the
United States, Egypt and so many others refused to countenance the Soviet regime. In
2008, the international sporting movement must refuse to tolerate one of the world's bloodiest dictatorships. When the International Olympic Committee handed the Games to Beijing it said
it was "taking the bet" that China would reform and open up, but human rights groups said it had yet to happen. The People9s Republic of China is the world9s biggest prison for the press.
Twenty-seven journalists and more than 60 Internet users are detained for crimes of opinion, said Reporters Without Borders.
New York-based Human Rights Watch also launched a China
Olympic Watch website this week, www.hrw.org/campaigns/china/beijing08/. While refraining from calling for a boycott, the group
also said China had failed to make progress on human rights. China
continues to have serious human rights problems, it said. As
China enters the global arena, the 2008 Beijing Olympics will provide an opportunity for China to come into compliance with
international legal standards that protect human rights. While
recent leadership changes have sparked some optimism that respect for human rights in China will improve, in fact this has
not happened.
|
