Save Darfur

Save Darfur: Rights groups frustrated by olympics

The pyrotechnics and fake pomp and circumstance of the Beijing Olympics will bring the competition to an end, but the genocide in Darfur that so many seem to have put out of their consciousness goes on.

"The Beijing Olympics have left the world's human rights groups frustrated and angry - convinced that China has been let off the hook for serious abuses, and adamant that future hosts like Russia must be held to a higher standard.

Western activists also are disappointed that among the thousands of athletes at the games, few have made even low-key efforts to speak out about political repression or China's economic ties to Sudan, where violence has raged in Darfur.

"Even if there was an athlete that wanted to speak out on issues of human rights, he might be silenced by whatever IOC official is mediating that press event," Darfur activist and former U.S. Olympian Joey Cheek said in an e-mail Wednesday to The Associated Press.

Cheek, co-founder of a group of athletes known as Team Darfur, had his visa revoked by Chinese authorities hours before he was to embark for Beijing. Team Darfur athletes who are in Beijing have acceded to International Olympic Committee curbs on political comment, resulting in what Cheek called "massive suppression of any voice that the government doesn't want heard."

Prominent human-rights groups have castigated the IOC and the games' major corporate sponsors for their reluctance to place any public pressure on China on such issues as political dissent and press freedom.

"The Chinese government's own voluntary pledges to improve human rights, allow public protests and guarantee 'complete freedom to report' made meeting these self-set human rights benchmarks one of the tests for a successful Olympics," Minky Worden of Human Rights Watch said in an e-mail from New York. "That is a test that both Beijing and the IOC have failed."

She said the Beijing games, rather than bequeathing a positive legacy, "may leave in place permanent technological surveillance and monitoring networks that make doing human rights work even more dangerous and difficult for Chinese citizens."

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International are calling on the IOC to establish a more rigorous process for assessing the human-rights records of countries which bid for and host future Olympics."

The IOC has met with Amnesty and Human Rights Watch, but IOC spokeswoman Giselle Davies indicated their proposals would likely be rebuffed.

"We're a sports organization. ... we stay clearly within our role, which is to bring sport to host countries," she said Wednesday. "We're not an organization that is best placed or has the capacity to deal with human rights issues"."
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With all due respect to Giselle Davies regarding this remark:

"We're a sports organization. ... we stay clearly within our role, which is to bring sport to host countries," she said Wednesday. "We're not an organization that is best placed or has the capacity to deal with human rights issues."

It is OBVIOUS you are not in an organization that has the capacity to deal with nor to care about human rights. And that is damned sad as I always thought the true spirit of sports was brotherhood. It is obvious however, it is now nothing more than a money making machine for selfish people who only care about winning at any cost. Shame on her for that remark.

*To whoever is going into this post and changing it. Please stop it. Thank you. The pyrotechnics and fake pomp and circumstance of the Beijing Olympics will bring the competition to an end, but the genocide in Darf... more

JanforGore

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