IN THE past few weeks, riots and demonstrations have taken place in Tibet, a region of China that has sought its independence for over 50 years. The protestors in Tibet are certainly aware of the upcoming Beijing Olympic Games this summer and are using the event to increase international pressure on China to grant them greater freedom. Unfortunately, with little direct support for the Tibetan causes from the international community, the Chinese government has been able to brutally crush the resistance and restore their undemocratic rule over the region.
The United States and the international community currently have a historic opportunity to pressure China for greater political freedom not only in Tibet, but also in the rest of China and in far away Sudan. The Olympic Games may not seem like they would have an enormous influence over the Chinese government, but past Olympic Games, in particular the Seoul Olympics of 1988, have helped to change undemocratic governments. It is time for the United States and the international community to match their rhetoric about supporting human rights and promoting democracy by using the Olympic Games as leverage to pressure the Chinese regime to allow greater freedom.
According to Amnesty International, in China today "torture and ill-treatment [remain] widespread" and "the government [continues] to crack down on religious observance outside officially sanctioned channels." The government in Beijing is little more than a brutal dictatorship that severely limits freedom and persecutes political and religious dissidents.
The Olympic Games are not only a way to increase Chinese prestige and economic power, but they are being used by the regime to legitimize their undemocratic rule. A similar situation occurred with the 1988 Seoul Olympics in South Korea which was then governed by a brutal military dictatorship. The Korean regime viewed the Olympics as a way to legitimize their rule by demonstrating international support for their regime. Fortunately, the exact opposite occurred and the scrutiny that the Olympics brought helped to force the military dictatorship to give up power to a pro-democracy movement that has led to democracy in South Korea for the last twenty years.
The Chinese government of today is certainly not as weak or unstable as the Korean government of twenty years ago, but the international community should apply similar pressure to the regime in Beijing to bring greater freedom to the people of China.
The recent situation in Tibet demonstrates just one of the various human rights atrocities currently occurring in China. Tibet was once an independent and peaceful nation until it was invaded by the Chinese shortly after the communist takeover. For over half a century, Tibet has suffered under the tyranny of the regime in Beijing and has seen its religious and cultural freedom severely curbed.
Along with severe human rights violations in China, the Chinese regime has also helped to cause human rights violations in Darfur with its support of the Sudanese regime. China has refused to join the international community in putting economic and diplomatic pressure on the government of Sudan in order to stop its genocidal behavior in Dafur. In fact many organizations and individuals have already boycotted the Olympic Games for this very reason. For example, famed director Stephen Spielberg left as an artistic advisor to the Games because he opposed Chinese policies in Sudan.
The rest of the world should not be afraid of using the Olympics in order to put pressure on the Chinese regime to become more democratic. The treat of a boycott of the Games by the United States or other countries has the potential to bring about positive change in China. Even less drastic steps by the international community, such as strongly denouncing the recent Chinese actions in Tibet, will lead to the Chinese regime taking less repressive actions against Tibetans because they do not want to taint the games. The point is that the international community should take concrete steps by using the games to condemn the human rights violations committed by the regime and pressure the regime to change their policies in the future.
History will judge this as a turning point in which the free world either finally stood up to the tyrannical rule of the Chinese regime or once again backed down and allowed China to continue to violate human rights. In the end, the freedom and dignity of more than a billion Chinese citizens and indeed those of many more in far off Darfur depend on the actions that we in the free world take with regards to the Olympics.
Sam Shirazi's column appears Mondays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at sshirazi@cavalierdaily.com.
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