we is in ur streetz
This is really a perfect time for the Tibetan nationalists to come out in open rebellion, because the Olympics means that the Chinese state either will not be able to crack down as brutally as it has in the past, or, if it does, that unprecendented attention will come to bear. If a Yangoon-style crackdown is forthcoming in Lhasa, liberal/democratic governments will have no choice but to boycott the Olympics (I would have thought). This would set a very interesting precedent. The Western boycott of the Moscow Olympics by the West was on the basis of the alleged Soviet invasion of Afghanistan not the domestic human rights situation, and the retaliatory boycott of the LA Olympics by the Eastern Bloc was on the basis that the US was not a safe place for communist athletes. This would then be the first human rights boycott at the Olympics.
For Chinese dissidents at this juncture, there is an unprecedented possiblity of getting away with the kind of action that might otherwise be met simply with deadly force, and in the case that it is met with such force, would have multiplied effects to what it otherwise would, forcing Western countries to take a concrete stance on the issue, embarassing the Chinese government and getting Western governments reluctantly involved in Chinese domestic issues. Such an involvement would set an uncomfortable precedent for Western government of concern for human rights and for the treatment of oppressed nations, the latter being particularly important because of the existence of national minorities within Western state borders whose national aspirations are circumscribed.
liam wrote:
I don’t see why a boycott would even be considered against China, Mark. Nobody boycotted the Berlin Games in ‘36 (which is the analogy you’re looking for), though a lot of Americans in particular felt strongly against sending a contingent. Pretty much everybody’s government acknowledges the PRC’s sovereignty in Tibet (the Beastie Boys and Björk not yet having attained recognition for themselves as States).
The tit-for-tat Moscow/LA Olympic boycotts were pretty unique occurrences, nowadays considered by the IOC as a total disaster for sport, to be prevented at all possible cost.
What was alleged about the Soviet invasion BTW? Nothing alleged about it as far as I can see.
Mark wrote:
What about the 1976 boycott in which almost every African country boycotted just because New Zealand was allowed to compete while New Zealand’s rugby union team was still competing against Apartheid South Africa?
No-one’s going to boycott on the basis of what’s happened so far. But if there’s a massacre in Lhasa, as there has been in the past (which I refer to as the ‘Yangoon-style crackdown’) then this really puts Western governments in an awkward situation.
I was not ‘looking for’ the analogy of the Nazi Olympiad, because no massacres had taken place in Nazi Germany by 1936, with the exception of the internal party-purge of the Night of the Long Knives – at least none that were widely-known (concentration camp deaths by that stage would have certainly amounted to thousands, but then that level of death from political imprisonment is probably comparable to what has happened in China and is not going to cause a boycott, clearly).
Are you saying that no one alleged that the Soviet Union had invaded Afghanistan? My use of the adjective “alleged” was not meant to imply that it didn’t happen, but that the allegation was crucially linked to the boycott, and to imply an independence of the allegation from the actual fact of invasion (it did happen, but the boycott had little to do with a respect for nations’ sovereignty, which the US has never had).
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