The Olympic torch lights up human rights abuses in Tibet

The closing ceremony to the Sydney Olympics ended with an artistic performance by the next hosting country. China and its main city, Beijing, will be hosting the Games later in 2008. The display that China put on was breathtaking. It felt, at the time, that having to wait for four years for China’s opening ceremony would be far too long.

There is no doubt that for China hosting the Olympics is of huge significance. Among many reasons, such as pride of one’s national achievements, the most important one could be that China feels it has finally arrived on the world stage.

China will ensure the Olympics are held at the most fabulous facilities. The Games will be known for their effortless management, a smog-free Beijing and polite people who will all want to practise their newly learnt English skills. They might also be remembered for the fact that China, for the first time, won the most medals out of all participating countries. Team America, you can start worrying.

Within this scenario, it must be horrific for China to have the “Free Tibet” demonstrations, first in Tibet and now during the carrying of the flame. London gave some indication of things to come. The momentum grew in Paris and it will be interesting to see how dramatic things will be in San Francisco.

There has been some pressure exerted on sponsoring companies to withdraw their money, on leaders of countries not to participate in the opening ceremony and even to cancel their athletes’ participation.

Germany’s Angela Merkel is rumoured to have withdrawn from attending the opening ceremony. Of course one has to remember that she and her Foreign Affairs Department might still be annoyed at the criticism and snub China played on Germany when Merkel met the Dalai Lama recently.

This will not be the first time that the Olympics have been used to punish a country. Many athletes from various countries have suffered badly when their teams were withdrawn because of some political point being made. Even I felt this when I attended the Olympics in Los Angeles in 1984 and the Russian block boycotted the games in retaliation for the US boycott of the Olympics held in Moscow in 1980.

So what is the reason for China’s troubles in Tibet? Tibet’s history is fairly colourful in that it has been overrun in some form or other by most of the big powers, whether it be Mongolia, Russia or the British empire. Now it is controlled and owned by China. As with the rest of China, there seems to be little freedom of speech or permission for religious affiliation.

Interestingly, according to Wikipedia, China has had to pump a fair amount of money into Tibet to try to lift its population out of abject poverty. The population has more than doubled since China took over. The GDP is 30 times that of the period before 1950, and infant mortality has dropped from 43% to 0,661%, among other achievements. In other words, not everything China is doing in the highest country in the world is evil.

It seems the issue revolves around human rights abuses. The Dalai Lama seems to have given up on the idea of a separate nation and is purely trying to exert some pressure to restore human rights. This effort is much frowned upon by the Tibetan government in exile that still operates out of India. Yet no other country has recognised the government in exile as the legitimate government of Tibet.

It doesn’t seem quite as straightforward as one might think. Yes, there are human rights abuses. And yes, China has been incredibly heavy-handed in dealing with the Tibetan uprisings. It is not known, and it is unlikely ever to see the light of day, how many people have died so far for the cause.

But compared with what America and its allies are doing in Iraq, the situation in Tibet hardly makes a ripple in terms of human rights abuses. Let’s check out Darfur. What about the Congo, Zimbabwe and recently Kenya, the beating and killing of monks in Burma, and then there’s Russia and Chechnya? These are just a few examples of countries where there have been onslaughts on human rights and human lives lost that make Tibet look like a peaceful haven, almost.

Of course that doesn’t mean that I condone the infringements on human rights in Tibet or the way that China took over Tibet or the manner in which the Dalai Lama was banished. In fact, I was quite sad that I had not made the trek into London to take part in the protests.

I just think that if one were to make an effort to speak up about human rights abuses, one should be more inclusive. Let’s make a big noise and a consistent one about all of the human rights abuses and let’s punish the countries that condone or practise them — not just China.