2008 Beijing Games Human Rights News

The Beijing Olympic Games are now into their second and last week. And the daily news, both sports results and political incidents, have reached a cruise speed that is hypnotic.

Even the official cant now seems routine. Such as the statement made by a Beijing municipal public security official to the New China news agency giving a breakdown of the requests for permission to demonstrate in one of the three city parks earmarked for this purpose. It was, to say the least, abstract. A total of 77 requests had been made by 149 people, the unidentified official said. Most were linked to the “right to work, health issues or social disputes.” You have to read the statement to get the flavour of the delicious bureaucratic jargon used to explain why and how 74 of the requests were refused.

As for sports, a sad day for everyone was dominated by the withdrawal of Chinese 100 metres hurdles champion Liu Xiang because of an injury. Scant attention was paid to the fifth protest by the US group Students for a Free Tibet, which managed to hang a gigantic banner on the facade of the headquarters of state-run China Central Television. And you could safely bet a fortune that no one noticed that the International Olympic Committee ordered the expulsion of Senegal’s athletics coach from the Olympic Games and from China for brandishing a banner saying “Friendship first, then competition” during the opening ceremony. It is true that the level of violence in the message was exceptional.

Patriotic fervour cannot fix everything and the scale of the Olympic Games opening ceremony was such that some adjustments to reality were needed.

The Chinese public television live broadcasts that are not quite live, the gigantic firework displays that were done on a computer, the pretty girl lip-synching the Ode to the Motherland sung by a less pretty girl in the wings, the hushed-up case of a dancer left paralysed by a three-metre fall during rehearsal... Each of these little subterfuges carried out to impress the visitors had its own little story, tragedy and symbolism. The latest little adjustment, while not exceptional in major public performances, has a symbolic significance that will be appreciated. The 56 child extras representing the 56 ethnic groups that make up China turn out to have all been members of the Han ethnic majority disguised as an Uyghur, Tibetan, Mongol and so on.

This was revealed by British journalist Jane Macartney of The Times of London during the daily news conference. The only reaction she got from Chinese Organising Committee vice-president Wang Wei (the man who had failed to notice the tank parked outside the press centre at the beginning of the week) was an angry reference to the “nit-picking” foreign media.

The episode recalls the exploit of Catherine the Great’s war minister, Grigori Potemkin, who had cardboard facade villages built along the road when she visited newly-conquered provinces in order to adjust reality to his interest and reassure the uneasy empress.

Care has been taken since the start of the games to keep the “trouble-makers” away. For example, US speed-skater Joey Cheek, a gold medal-winner in the 2006 Turin winter games, found that his visa had been withdrawn by the Chinese embassy on the eve of his departure last week for Beijing. Although he was not given any explanation, it was clearly linked to the fact that he is the founder of “Team Darfur,” a coalition of 72 athletes that has been urging China to stop supporting the Sudanese regime responsible for the genocide in Darfur.

Meanwhile, as long appearances are maintained, everything is fine, Mr. Potemkin.

Chen Dashan is a grieving father who cannot get to the bottom of his 20-year-old daughter’s mysterious death while she was in the army. A military band conductor, she died suddenly and inexplicably after a concert in 2006. The last time he saw her, she was a lifeless body in the back of an ambulance. Her superiors claimed she was the victim of a heart attack but the authorities never paid the required compensation to her family. Her father suspects a cover-up and their indifference has only compounded his grief.

This was why Chen filed several requests for permission to demonstrate during the Olympic Games in the parks that the Chinese authorities have supposedly earmarked for public protests. “The pressure on the government is very strong, with the games, but it will be impossible afterwards,” he told a Wall Street Journal reporter. But his requests were all denied. So last Sunday, 10 August, he went to Tiananmen Square to distribute leaflets explaining his campaign on behalf of his daughter.

AFP Video has done a report on the difficulties of demonstrating in Beijing, and it shows this ordinary, 53-year-old father from northern China confronting an icy police officer. After distributing a few leaflets, Chen was led away. Since then, he has not been answering his telephone.