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04/27/2007
IOC caves In To Chinese Propaganda and agrees route for Olympic Torch Relay through Tibet
| FTC[Friday, April 27, 2007 17:59] |
| Whereabouts of detained Tibet activists remain unknown after Mount Everest Base camp protest 26 April 2007 The International Tibet Support Network (ITSN) is dismayed to learn that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has decided to give final approval to China's plan to route the Olympic Torch Relay for the Beijing 2008 Games through Tibet. Chinese officials have repeatedly stated their intention to take the flame over Mount Everest. Activists from Students for a Free Tibet yesterday (25 April) held a protest at Everest base camp in Tibet over the plans. Four Americans, including one Tibetan-American were detained, and their current whereabouts are unknown. The staging of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing offers China the opportunity to exploit pervasive media coverage of the Games to project its propaganda that China is an ethnically harmonious society, engaged in a "peaceful rise" on the world stage. Bolstering its claim that Tibet is an inalienable part of China is a key aspect to that propaganda and China has incorporated Tibetan symbols into the Games: the Tibetan antelope is an official mascot of the Games whilst the Opening Ceremony will be carefully choreographed to reflect ethnic harmony in China with Tibetan children being forced to take part. By granting Beijing the right to route the Olympic Torch Relay through Tibet, the IOC has provided China with a further opportunity to stake its claim over Tibet in what will undoubtedly be extensive media coverage of the torch relay. "It is unacceptable that the IOC has allowed China to cynically exploit Olympic imagery of universalism and peace to press its claims over Tibet, against the very Himalayan backdrop where only last September Chinese security fired at defenceless Tibetan refugees, killing one nun before rounding up, detaining and torturing others"(1), said Matt Whitticase of Free Tibet Campaign, a member of the International Tibet Support Network. "This decision is merely the latest example of the IOC's determination to give respectability to China's repression in Tibet." The IOC has similarly failed to hold China to pledges made to improve its human rights record as a condition of being given the Games, most notably by failing to insist that media freedoms, extended to foreign journalists to cover the Games, are extended to journalists wishing to travel to Tibet (2). Any foreign journalist wishing to travel to Tibet will still have to obtain a special permit to travel there, despite an earlier pledge that journalists would be able to travel anywhere in China, including Tibet, without restrictions. On 25 April, three Tibet activists including Tenzin Dorjee a Tibetan-American, and a camera-woman were detained by Chinese authorities after demonstrating and unfurling a banner reading "One World, One Dream, Free Tibet 2008" in English, and "Free Tibet" written in Tibetan and Chinese, at Mount Everest's main base camp in Tibet. The protest was held on the eve of the announcement of the torch relay route and as a Chinese team of climbers prepared a trial ascent of the mountain. Tenzin Dorjee, who was wearing a t-shirt that read "No Torch through Tibet" lit a symbolic torch of Tibetan freedom and sang the Tibetan National Anthem before he was detained. Tenzin Dorjee is the first known exiled Tibetan to stage a protest inside Tibet. He and three others, Kirsten Westby, Laurel Mac Sutherlin and Shannon Service are in detention, according to a Xinhua statement issued today: "Authorities of Tibet said [the protest] was a serious incident in which foreigners seriously violated Chinese laws and were engaged in an activity not in line with their status when entering China. Local authorities detained and inquired four of the tourists, with another fleeing the site." Students for a Free Tibet spokeswoman Lhadon Tethong has called on the Chinese government to immediately release the four protesters. In a statement today she also said, "We call on the IOC, and Jacques Rogge specifically, to stop denying their obvious involvement in the politics of China and to use their leverage to pressure China to release the activists."  The UK newspaper The Guardian, reported today that Jacques Rogge appeared to duck questions about China's human rights record when facing the media yesterday. The paper said he referred inquiries about the issue, and the country's controversial relations with Sudan, Taiwan and Tibet, to Hein Verbruggen, a senior IOC member and chairman of the IOC Co-ordination Commission overseeing the Beijing Games. Hein Verbruggen was reported by the Associated Press yesterday as saying "We don't want to be, as the IOC, involved in any political issues. It's not our task. We are here for organizing the Games."For more information: Contact: Matt Whitticase: matt@freetibet.org; tel: +44 (0)207 324 4605 (o); +44 (0)7904 063746 (m) Footnotes: (1) On 30 September 2006 Chinese border security opened fire on a group of Tibetan refugees attempting to flee into Nepal. One Tibetan was confirmed dead and credible eyewitness accounts have testified to others in the group being detained and tortured. The incident was filmed by Western mountaineers and was widely covered in the international media. (2) The official China Daily guaranteed full media freedoms in the run up to the IOC decision on which city would stage the 2008 Games: "The world's media will enjoy full freedom to report on all aspects of China if the 2008 Olympic Games is held in the city" [Beijing]. The IOC acknowledged that pledge after awarding the Games to Beijing: "Beijing has signed a Host City Contract with the IOC which provides the condition on the Organising Committee to give free access to the country for all accredited media."(Jacques Rogge, quoted by AP, 27 Aug, 2001). The Olympics Press Chief, Sun Weijia, said at a press briefing in September last year that "they [foreign journalists] can travel anywhere in China. There will be no restrictions." |
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