Nobody Wins at the Genocide Olympics

Lest those romantics among you, who swoon over Chinese culture and the glories of its past civilization, believe that Tibet is the only human rights issue in China, today let's examine how the Chinese government treats other people, including its own citizens, and how the upcoming Olympics affect that situation.

China is in the midst of a massive rebuilding of Beijing in order to accommodate the Olympians and the audience. The organization Human Rights Watch has recently (March 12th) published a report documenting "the Chinese government’s failure to fulfill long-repeated promises to protect the rights of migrant construction workers, as well as to end deprivations caused by the discriminatory nature of China’s household registration (hukou) system. An estimated 1 million migrant construction workers, hailing from other parts of China, make up nearly 90 percent of Beijing’s construction workforce. These workers are the muscle behind completion of Olympic Games-related infrastructure and sporting venues. The Beijing Olympic Games begin on August 8, 2008."

Examples cited by the Human Rights Watch include failure to pay the workers at all, paying them at a rate far below what was promised, and the absence of any medical insurance. Apparently, the "hukou system of household registration, designed to prevent and control the mass influx of rural inhabitants to China’s cities, bars Beijing’s migrant construction workers from social welfare benefits such as medical care, which are only available to legally registered urban residents." I guess the Chinese government isn't interested in all of its outlying provinces.

The Olympics have always been one of the most-viewed and most-written-about world events. There will be televisions crews and reporters in Beijing from many, many countries. Let's hope that they don't want to always be truthful in their writing! Moving right along to freedom of the press, Reporters Without Borders reports 180 foreign journalists were arrested or harassed in 2007. But it is not just the foreign reporters. There are also reports that the government began rounding up and imprisoning Chinese bloggers and reporters for more liberal Chinese newspapers. Its web site has lists of those Chinese journalists either imprisoned or sent to psychiatric hospitals.

Don't think that any of our journalists will be exempt from this lack of freedom of the press. Again, according to Reporters Without Borders: "Police obstructed the work of correspondents reporting on sensitive subjects throughout the year, arresting a team from the BBC World Service in March in a village in Hunan, where there had just been a riot. “You are not in the United States or Great Britain. This is China”, said one of the officers who interrogated them. One journalist told them that the Beijing government had adopted new rules. “That is only for news linked to the Olympic Games and I don’t think you have come here for the Olympics,” the officer replied."

Of course, some reporters, audience members and even athletes may not want to be there anyway, because, according to Olympic chief Jacques Rogge. The BBC quotes him as saying Chinese air pollution could lead to some events at the 2008 Beijing Games being postponed. He notes that it would depend on the duration of the event....for example, a cycling event would more likely be postponed due to concerns over the quality of the air than the shot-put.

Worldwatch Institute says that: "China’s smog, caused mainly by emissions from power plants, vehicles, and other human activities, is seriously affecting urban air quality. In a 2003 World Bank survey of air pollution in 100 cities worldwide, more than 80 percent of the Chinese cities listed had sulfur dioxide or nitrogen dioxide emissions above the World Health Organization (WHO) threshold, according to the Worldwatch Institute’s Vital Signs 2005 report. In Beijing, residents are warned to stay indoors during the spring dust storm season, and flight delays from heavy smog are common. In Guangzhou, fine particulate levels are up to five times U.S. safety limits. And in Hong Kong, sulfur dioxide levels rose by 41 percent in 2005 alone, threatening the city’s competitiveness as the free-trade center of Asia. For much of the year, the city is shrouded in smog and people can barely see across the famous Victoria Harbour."

The cost of pollution in China has been estimated at nearly 70 billion dollars. Even if you are reluctant to ask the American Olympic Team to boycott the Genocide Games, you should caution them not to breath too hard while they're there.