02/14/2019
MASSIMO INTROVIGNE
Senator Marco Rubio, co-chairman of the US Congressional-Executive Commission on China, is putting pressure on the International Olympic Committee, requesting that the city of Beijing be stripped of the rights to organize the Winter Olympic Games. 2022. Rubio argues that the gross human rights violations in China, particularly in the area of religious freedom, are incompatible with the Olympic spirit.
(Image credits: Lin Cunzhen – CC BY-SA 4.0)
He 8 February, Foreign Policy published an extensive article about the effects on the situation of human rights in China for the Summer Olympic Games 2008 in Beijing, with the provocative title “The Beijing Olympics paved the way for the Xinjiang camps”. The article argues that the fact that the West did not boycott the Olympics 2008 It was a message to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that he could “get away with everything”” and continue with their repressive policies without any serious reaction from the United States and other countries.. Foreign Policy He also mocks Western academics' "ridiculous” what, in 2008, predicted that the Olympics would lead to openings and liberalizations in China. In fact, what happened was the opposite.
The Olympics of 2008 in Beijing have been studied by various political scientists. A consensus has emerged that the CCP wanted to avoid any kind of protest before the Olympics., while the opponents of the Party, particularly in Tibet and Sinkiang, They tried to use the Olympic year to attract international attention to their complaints.
Protests erupted in Tibet in March 2008 and were harshly repressed. Reports of terrorist attacks in Xinjiang should always be handled with care, as news is often amplified by the CCP for propaganda purposes. Nevertheless, Most international observers agree that, four days before the opening of the Olympics, two men in Kashgar, Sinkiang, They threw grenades at members of the Chinese police, killing twelve of them. As expected, This led to an increasingly widespread repression of uigures and other Muslims in the region.
Bitter Winter has documented how social and ethnic protests prior to the Olympics were also repressed, publishing new material about the incident of the 19 July 2008 en Menglian, when the protest of rubber farmers from the Dai ethnic minority in the southern part of Yunnan was stopped by the police, killing two of them.
Scholars also agree that the CCP did not expect these protests and was even more surprised when Westerners sided with the protesters and began demonstrating against the Olympic Torch crossing., who was heading to Beijing, with slogans denouncing human rights violations and repression in Tibet. The CCP's immediate reaction was to mobilize Chinese students abroad to demonstrate in favor of the Beijing Olympics and criticize the protesters.. Before 2008, The CCP had begun organizing Chinese students abroad, and Foreign Policy report that "although at that time it had been said that they had been spontaneous, It was recently revealed that these protests were organized directly from Beijing.”.
in a study that was published in 2009, one year after the Olympics, three academics from Korea's Yonsei University, Sukhee Han, Ho-Cheong Cheong y Pieter Stek, analyzed the torch incidents within the framework of “public diplomacy” of the CCP, that tries to alternatively project the images of the “dominant dragon”, to intimidate potential enemies and opponents both in China and abroad, and the “gentle panda”, to gain some international sympathy and support. The Olympic Games 2008 They were advertised in the style of the “gentle panda”, but the protests forced the CCP to show the teeth of the “dominant dragon”, something that I hadn't exactly planned before.
Yonsei University academics concluded that the torch incidents had negative consequences for China's international image and made it even more difficult to use the Olympics as a propaganda tool to publicize the image of the "gentle panda.". Nevertheless, 10 years later, Foreign Policy He also pointed out that the Olympics 2008 were a test of international reactions for the CCP. Tibetan and other protests had been ruthlessly crushed by the CCP's military intervention.. ¿What would be the reaction of the West?? After all, in 1980, a “coalition of the willing”” led by the United States had boycotted the Moscow Olympic Games (The Soviets retaliated against the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984).
However, The era of boycotts of the Olympic Games was a thing of the past. Some European leaders, led by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, declined the invitation to attend the opening ceremony of 2008 in Beijing. Nevertheless, nothing worse happened. Most countries argued that for both economic and political reasons the dialogue with Beijing should not be interrupted..
As the Winter Olympic Games approach 2022 in Beijing, there is no reason to believe that the international community will be stronger than in 2008 when it comes to pointing out the contradiction between Olympic values and China's dismal record on human rights. If anything, Europe seems weaker when denouncing human rights violations in China. Perhaps for this reason the United States is calling to withdraw China's hosting rights to the Winter Olympics. 2022 and not a boycott. However, China is an influential member of the International Olympic Committee and can always mobilize several “friendly” countries.
There is a possibility that the world will have another Chinese Olympics in 2022. Maybe this is inevitable, despite Senator Rubio, but, at least, We can hope that there will be a new version of the protests of 2008 that were related to the torch affair. As Yonsei's study demonstrated, in 2008 los Tibetan Buddhists and Falun Gong were able to make the CCP's international propaganda leading up to the Olympics a failure for the most part. A larger coalition of victims of the crackdown is now taking shape. religious freedom and human rights by the CCP. Hopefully you can make your voice heard throughout the journey leading up to the Beijing Olympics. 2022.
Massimo Introvigne (born on 14 June 1955 in Rome) He is an Italian sociologist of religions. He is the founder and general director of the Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR), an international network of scholars studying new religious movements. Introvigne is the author of around 70 books and more 100 specialized articles in the field of religious sociology. He was the main author of the Encyclopedia of religions in Italy (Encyclopedia of religions in Italy). He is a member of the editorial board of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Religious Studies and the executive board of the Magazine New Religion edited by the University of California. Of the 5 from January to 31 December 2011, served as “Representative in the fight against racism, xenophobia and discrimination, with special emphasis on discrimination against Christians and members of other religions” of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe(OSCE). Of 2012 a 2015 He was president of the Observatory for Religious Freedom, instituted by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to monitor religious freedom issues on a global scale.
