Category Archives: Europe / International

The Olympic torch has been dogged by protests this weekend as it has made its way through London and Paris. China’s government has responded predictably, saying that the protests were the work of a ‘few Tibetan separatists’ attempting to ‘sabotage’ the event. Spokespeople for the International Olympic Committee have lined-up with the Chinese government and decried the ‘politicisation’ of sport.

Alex Gilady, a IOC coordination commission member, said:

The important message is to tell our athletes that some people are trying to use them and to ride on their backs for solutions that the world has to find in other places like the United Nations.”

However, a recently produced report by Amnesty International shows that the ones using the Games as a political weapon are the Chinese government. It claims that the Chinese government is launching a systematic campaign to imprison activists ahead of the Games. It cites in particular the cases of Hu Jia and Yang Chunlin. Hu Jia has just recently been jailed for three and a half years for spreading

malicious rumors, libel and instigation in an attempt to subvert the state’s political and socialist systems.”

Jia, co-founder of the the Beijing Aizhixing Institute of Health Education, has been a repeated critic of the Chinese government. In November 2007, he participated via web-cam in a European Union parliamentary hearing in Brussels in which he stated that China had failed to fulfill its promises to improve human rights in the run-up to the Olympics. His trial lasted four hours and his lawyers were given one week to prepare his case. Representatives of foreign governments wishing to attend the trial were, according to diplomatic sources:

told that all seats had been ‘allocated’ and there was no space. On 18 March 2008, the same morning of the trial, they were given the contradictory information that seats had been ‘allocated’ to those that had arrived earlier the same day.”

Yang Chunlin who was detained by police on 6 July 2007 launched a petition under the slogan ‘We want human rights, not the Olympics’. Reports have claimed that he was tortured:

For six days in early August and one day in September 2007, his arms and legs were reportedly stretched and chained to the four corners of an iron bed so that he could not move. He was forced to eat, drink and defecate in that position. He was also reportedly forced to watch other detainees being subjected to similar treatment and to clean up their defecation.”

Claims of torture and abuse of activists riddle the report. Some are arrested tried and convicted of subversion like Jia and others are arrested and charged on spurious grounds. This is true in the case of Chen Guangcheng who is currently serving a four-year-and-three month sentence for ‘damaging property and blocking the traffic’ in Linyi city. No penalty points or license shredding, over four years in jail and do not pass go. Guangcheng campaigned against the authorities in Linyi “forced abortions and sterilizations which affected thousands of local women.”

Tomorrow mark’s the fifth anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq war; the invasion began on 20th March, 2003, and President George W Bush declared ‘victory’ on the 1st of May that year. Five long years later and British and American troops remain in Iraq and the war we were told was over is still being fought.

If you judge the war by the fate of it’s proponents then consider this… Tony Blair has left the leadership of his party, his legacy tainted; George Bush enjoys approval ratings somewhere in the region of 19%; and Hillary Clinton, who sided with the Bush administration in it’s decision to invade, is struggling to win the Democratic nomination for the Presidency.

However, there is little room for the anti-war movement to brag. Demonstrations held to mark the anniversary drew crowds of ‘thousands’ compared to the hundreds of thousands (even the police, whose estimates are usually on the conservative side, said 750,000) in the month before the invasion.

One of the bitterest legacies of the Iraq conflict is that it is not just Muslims who have been alienated from the political process, but also the majority of people who opposed the war and now feel totally unrepresented and disenfranchised. Simply, they were told their opinions were irrelevant and they have reacted as such; dropped out of politics and lost interest in the process. So nobody will be particularly relishing the ‘celebration’ of this anniversary – it will be one of those ‘parties’ where everybody is nervously examining their feet or fidgeting with their mobile phones, hoping to be saved by ANY text message.

Whether we like the fact that the invasion happened or not – and I most defiantly do not – the issue now is how, having made the mistake, we rectify it. Of course, troops need to be withdrawn, but how, and in what manner?