2008 Beijing Games Human Rights News

Everyone agrees the Games are all about image and the Chinese government knows this.

The state-run CCTV was careful not to show the opening ceremony live, once again showing up the IOC with impunity, as we saw on the "Aujourd'hui la Chine" ("China Today") website.

When the inflexible IOC, an expert in washing its hands of matters, was asked about this by a foreign reporter, it referred the media to CCTV. Chinese living in the US protested strongly against the 12-hour delay in broadcasting the ceremony by the US network NBC, which wanted, thanks to the time difference with China, to draw the maximum audience. But there was no fuss about the 30-second delay in broadcasting the Brazil-Belgium football match on 7 August. Chinese officials said that was a measure to combat hooliganism.

No image was spared, especially during celebration of the national spirit. The British paper the Daily Telegraph reported on Monday that the pictures of huge footsteps in the skies of Beijing, which amazed the world during the opening ceremony, were prepared in advance by computers and broadcast in the Bird’s Nest stadium and by the world’s TV stations as if they were live. The masters of illusion are very good at this kind of thing.

Other images were more modest and less global but still noteworthy. The pictures of 300 immigrant workers who worked on the Olympic site (and who were then asked to return at once to their homes in the countryside so as not to pollute the heady Games atmosphere with their presence) were printed on clay bricks by young photographer Wen Fang and exhibited at Beijing’s Paris-Beijing art gallery, recalling Emperor Qin Shi Huang’s anonymous terracotta army.

More violent – and less tolerated by the authorities who don’t want to see even a glimpse of a Tibetan flag – is the film Leaving Fear Behind, made by Tibetans and showing the isolation and distress in their country.