Darfur: August 2008 Archives

By BBC News
August 14, 2008

China has set aside three parks during the Olympics, to allow people to demonstrate. But, as the BBC's Michael Bristow finds out, the parks are empty and those who apply for permission to protest are even finding themselves arrested.

Just before the Olympic Games began, officials said ordinary Chinese people would be able to apply for permission to vent their feelings.

But several would-be demonstrators appear to have been detained by the authorities after trying to apply for that permission.

This is just one way in which China is attempting to restrict embarrassing protests during the Olympic Games.

"The protest application process clearly isn't about giving people greater freedom of expression, but making it easier for the police to suppress it," said Sophie Richardson, from Human Rights Watch.

One of those detained is Zhang Wei, who was held after applying to stage a protest about her family's forced eviction from their courtyard home.

Her son, Mi Yu, said she was initially supposed to be held for just three days for "disturbing social order", but that that had now been extended to 30 days.

Ms Zhang, forced to move to make way for redevelopment in Beijing's Qianmen district, made several protest applications.

"She went every two or three days after seeing a report about the parks. But the police did not give their approval," Mr Mi said.

His mother was taken away last week. The family have not heard from her since.

Many obstacles

Another activist held after making a protest application was Ji Sizun, who was detained on Monday, according to Human Rights Watch.

The 58-year-old, from Fujian province, wanted to call for greater participation by ordinary people in the political process.

Citing witnesses, the rights group said Mr Ji was taken away shortly after entering a Beijing police station to ask about his application.

This application process is a taxing one. Would-be protesters even have to tell police what posters and slogans they intend to use.

There have been reports of others who have been prevented from staging protests in the designated areas.

Some have just had their applications turned down, one was sent back to her home province and yet others have been stopped from travelling to Beijing.

Confusion

The parks designated as protest zones - Shijie, Zizhuyuan and Ritan - do not seem to have been inundated with protesters.

At Shijie ("World") Park on Wednesday one worker said there had not been a single demonstration since the Olympics began.

Potential protesters might have been put off by the police car and van parked directly outside the main entrance of the park, which houses large models of famous world sites.

No one seemed to know where a protest could be held, even if Beijing's Public Security Bureau gave its approval.

"I don't know anything about that," said a ticket collector when asked where protesters could express their opinions.

It was a similar story at Ritan Park, where there seems to have been no protests either.

Dissuading people from protesting is just one tactic being used by China's security forces to prevent demonstrations.

Beijing's streets are full of police, other security personnel and volunteers, wearing red armbands, on the lookout for trouble.

Eight pro-Tibet demonstrators from Students for a Free Tibet were quickly detained on Wednesday after staging a protest.

Some well-known Chinese activists have also been told to keep a low profile during the Olympics. The friend of one said she had decided to leave the city during the Olympics to avoid trouble.

>> Original source

By DeWayne Wickham | USA TODAY
August 12, 2008

What China wants during these Olympics it cannot be allowed to have. More than anything else, the emerging superpower wants to bask in the glory of its role as host of the quadrennial global sports festival. It wants the worldwide embrace that traditionally has come to nations bestowed this honor.

Of course, such acceptance hasn't always been merited. Nazi Germany hosted the Olympics in August 1936, just 11 months after it stripped German Jews of their citizenship and banned them from marrying blond, blue-eyed Germans. And the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan seven months before Moscow hosted the Olympics in July 1980.

The U.S., which took part in the 1936 Olympics but boycotted the 1980 contest, is represented in China by 596 athletes and George W. Bush, the first U.S. president to attend an Olympic opening ceremony abroad. Bush said it "would be an affront to the Chinese people" if he didn't attend.

He ought to be more concerned about the people of Darfur, the embattled region of Sudan where it's estimated that 300,000 people have been killed and 2.7 million displaced by fighting that has raged in the African country since 2003.

Three years ago, Bush called the attacks by government-backed militias on ethnic minorities in Darfur a "genocide." In July, the International Criminal Court indicted Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir on genocide charges and is considering issuing a warrant for his arrest. China is Sudan's biggest arms supplier. If the Sudanese leader were proven to have committed genocide, China -- which gives Sudan the means to carry out this carnage -- would be guilty of complicity.

China's sins

China's unbroken link to the genocide in Darfur should make a lot of people cringe at the legitimacy the Games now taking place in Beijing give the centuries-old tradition of the Olympic Truce, where warring factions would suspend fighting during the Games, has been replaced with one of indifference. As the rape and slaughter of people in Darfur go on, the U.S. Olympic team picked a refugee from Sudan -- who is now a U.S. citizen -- to carry this country's flag during the opening ceremony last week.

China had to be relieved that it got off so easily.

The worldview

The world has shown much greater tolerance for genocide in Africa than in Europe. About 800,000 people were killed in Rwanda during a span of a little more than three months in 1994 as the international community did virtually nothing. A token force of peacekeepers from African nations has been dispatched to Darfur but has been unable to stop the bloodshed.

When the former Yugoslavia fractured into warring parts, the response was different. Thousands of U.S. and NATO troops were sent into two breakaway regions -- Kosovo and Bosnia -- to stop ethnic cleansing. They stayed for years to keep the war's smoldering ashes from reigniting.

Without significant pressure from other nations, China has done little to pressure the Sudanese government to end the attacks on the people of Darfur. A serious boycott threat might have gotten China to act in the months leading up to the Olympics, but that didn't happen.

Now that the Games are underway, it is up to the athletes who have descended upon Beijing to find a way to signal their disapproval of China's support of the mass killings in Sudan. Some of them have already rejected such a role by saying that they are athletes, not politicians.

They should be reminded that those who commit genocide recognize no such distinction.

>> Original source

By Christine Brennan - USA TODAY
August 07, 2008

The popular notion is that the story of the Beijing Olympic Games begins this Friday night, 8.8.08, as the saying goes, with the opening ceremony in the glowing-red Bird's Nest.

But that's not entirely true. The history of China's efforts to host the Games is already being written -- some chapters, in fact, are already completed -- and, so far, the plot line looks terrible for the Chinese.

If it weren't so sad, it would be almost comical, how China's leaders are trying to sabotage their own Olympic legacy. They were supposed to free dissidents. Instead, they jailed more. They said their air would be clean. But it looks like pea soup.

Things didn't get better in Tibet. They didn't get better in Sudan's Darfur. They didn't get better for the workers in China.

Journalists were promised they could carry out their work unfettered. Then the government blocked troublesome Internet sites in the press center.

Finally, in what might be their most outrageous act yet (there's still plenty of time for more), Chinese officials revoked the visa of Joey Cheek, one of the world's most charitable Olympians, banning him from the country because of his humanitarian work as co-founder of Team Darfur.

The problem with China is not its people, but its leaders. It's not one country, but two. There's the deferential, white-glove-wearing, efficient nation of 1.3 billion that just might put on the most awe-inspiring Olympics in memory.

There's also heavy-handed official China, the one doing all that damage to its people's good name. The government might as well be the smog that rolls in each day, obscuring the stunning venues, the first-class organization and the simple acts of kindness of tens of thousands of volunteers. You get the feeling it can't help itself. At a time when it so wants to join the rest of the world, when it craves being discovered and admired, it reverts to its Mao default setting.

After decades of Games held in the most agreeable places -- Calgary, Barcelona, Sydney -- we're in uncharted territory here. But it's already clear that the worst thing national Olympic committees and their athletes can do over the next 2½ weeks is to acquiesce to the Chinese leadership's outrageous positions rather than hold true to the values of their homeland because they want to be good guests.

The U.S. Olympic Committee took a few dangerous steps in that direction Wednesday when, in a previously scheduled news conference, its leaders failed to strongly stand up for Cheek, who not only was one of their own just 2½ years ago, he was so beloved he was selected to carry the U.S. flag in the 2006 closing ceremony.

Choosing his words as if he thought Chinese President Hu Jintao had sneaked into the back row to eavesdrop, USOC CEO Jim Scherr gave a lukewarm defense of Cheek: "It is unfortunate, but it's between this government and Joey as a private citizen."

No "We stand with Joey." Not a hint of "He's ours, and he's to be lauded for his efforts." No, just Citizen Cheek.

The USOC is not a political organization, but it does represent a country of many freedoms, and it must do better than that in the next 2½ weeks.

Its leaders would do well to follow the example of the U.S. athletes, who picked as their flag bearer a 1,500-meter runner who fled Sudan at 6 and lived in a refugee camp in Kenya for 10 years before settling in the United States.

Lopez Lomong also happens to be an outspoken member of Cheek's Team Darfur, saying if he won a medal in China, he would "hold an American flag and a Sudan flag" on the medal stand. That would be a perfect political statement, the kind the Chinese government and its accomplices in the International Olympic Committee have railed against for years.

That didn't bother the U.S. team captains who voted for the flag bearer. They could have hidden Lomong. Instead, they asked him to lead them into the stadium.

>> Original source

By Sean Gregory | TIME Magazine in Partnership with CNN
August 06, 2008

Last week, Joey Cheek was pumped. Over lunch in New York City, I talked to the wide-eyed Olympic champion about his upcoming trip to Beijing, where the ex-speedskater and Darfur activist planned to rally athletes to raise awareness of troubles in Sudan. He wanted to outline the steps that China, which has close ties to the Sudanese government, could take to stop the atrocities in Darfur. I half-jokingly asked him how he managed to get his hands on a visa, since the Chinese government was notoriously begrudging to let potential nuisances step foot in the country during the Olympics. "Man, I really don't know," he said, laughing. "I don't know if I want to say how it might have happened, in case they want to close that loophole."

A week later, Cheek's trip has been shut down. There's nothing to laugh about now.

As the clock ticks down to the August 8 opening ceremonies in Beijing, China doesn't seem to be getting the best eleventh-hour PR advice. Now's the time when swimmers and runners could distract the world from the nation's much-criticized human rights record, and when athletic competition could supersede geopolitical tension for a few short weeks. Instead, in the weeks leading up to the Games Chinese organizers decided to censor websites about Tibet, Falun Gong, and other politically sensitive groups to the foreign media, causing the predictable outcry from international press and human right groups. (Officials have since backed down and opened up the sites). Now comes word that China has banned Cheek to enter the country on the eve of the Games, revoking the visa of an American athletic hero who donated his $40,000 in medal winnings from the 2006 Olympics to Darfurian refugees in Chad.

With the American media descending on Beijing this week and looking for a headline before the sports start, the move almost guarantees that China will take a beating in the foreign press. Those stories will not be about the impressive architecture of the Bird's Nest stadium, or how the new fleet of Olympic buses are running smoothly. Now, headlines will point to how a humanitarian essentially got kicked out of the country. The timing could not be worse.

The image hit is likely to cost China more than any activism Cheek would have done during the Games. Although he's the co-founder of Team Darfur, an international coalition of athletes pushing for reform in the Sudan, he's not exactly rabble-rouser. In our interview, Cheek said he was not planning any organized protests, and he had yet to set up any meetings with government officials. He's extremely sensitive to the fact that many Olympic athletes have trained their whole lives for this brief shining moment, and if taking up the Darfur cause is a distraction, he emphasizes that it's their right to stay out of it. He also knows that with Chinese Olympic officials sensitive to criticism during the Games, many athletes would risk their standing within their home countries if they spoke out. As an ex-Olympian, Cheek certainly wasn't going to steal the spotlight. Now China has given it to him.

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