The Stupidity of a Fire Blowing "Olympic Host" -- Playing with fire
-- Micky's humble opinion: The Chinese reaction during the past weeks
have demonstrated the Chinese propensity of violence. Beijing Olympic is
gradually unfolding as a tragic and costly mistake. --
Financial Times FT.com
COMMENT & ANALYSIS
Editorial comment
Playing with fire
Published: April 8 2008 19:13 | Last updated: April 8 2008 19:13
China is feeling the heat. Instead of a smooth series of positive images
ahead of the Beijing Games, the grand plans for a world tour by the
Olympic torch have produced a new international s****t: extingui****ng the
flame as a pro-Tibet protest.
At the weekend there were damaging scenes of a squad of Chinese
attendants jostling demonstrators in London. After the disruption of the
torch¡¯s progress through Paris comes the sight of protesters on the
Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco. These are not reasons to curtail
the tour. On the contrary, the ¡°journey of harmony¡± is a valuable chance
to give Beijing vivid proof that significant swathes of international
opinion deeply oppose the recent crackdown. The protests gain added
power ahead of the torch¡¯s trip through Tibet itself.
The op****tunity for political expression that comes from taking the
torch around the globe is an innovation from 2004, when the games
returned to Athens. But the modern Olympic movement has long had a
complex relation****p with politics. The first tour of the torch came in
the run-up to the 1936 Olympiad, as part of the Nazi propaganda which
made Berlin the most notorious games of recent times.
The International Olympic Committee talks about s****t practised without
discrimination in mutual understanding amid friend****p and fair play.
National governments of host cities, however, see a powerful occasion to
capture the world¡¯s attention and promote pride in their country. More
than any other s****ting event, the wide range of participating countries
and the claims made for the Olympic spirit give the games an
irresistible cachet.
These qualities also make the event a unique way to register
international tensions. One hundred years ago, Irish athletes boycotted
the London games over the British refusal to give independence to
Ireland. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan prompted a US-led boycott of
the Moscow games in 1980, followed by a Soviet-led boycott of the 1984
games in Los Angeles.
Throughout the cold war, barely an Olympiad went by without some protest
either about the policies of the host country or of other nations taking
part. The run of relatively protest-free games dates only from Seoul and
Barcelona. If the IOC did not see that the 2001 decision to award the
games to Beijing was likely to end that run, it was extraordinarily naive.
The 2008 games could ¨C still ¨C be a celebration of a modernised China.
But the event will not convince if the response to peaceful protests
ahead of time is that of a regime that cannot cope with debate.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
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