NYT Editorial on China’s List of Olympic “Don’ts”

Today’s New York Times has an editorial shaming Beijing for their absurd and intrusive list of “don’ts” connected to the Olympics.

The International Olympic Committee has long prohibited political activities at Olympic venues, and we respect the goal of trying to put aside divisions while celebrating a common humanity. But Beijing is using those restrictions for its own authoritarian ends.

To win the right to host the Games, China promised to improve its human-rights record. It keeps moving mostly in the opposite direction. In recent days, authorities effectively disbarred two prominent human-rights lawyers who volunteered to defend Tibetans charged in violent anti-China protests. They also broke up a gathering of 100 parents who were peacefully protesting shoddy school construction and the deaths of their children in the May 12 earthquake.

And while authorities initially relaxed restrictions on journalists and aid workers after the earthquake, they have again tightened up. Local journalists have been discouraged from covering the parents’ protests, and international television networks have complained that security requirements will limit coverage of the Olympics.

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The committee and Western governments need to remind Beijing that the world is watching, and so far the picture isn’t good.

Indeed.

China has exploited the Olympic games for their own goals – shutting down internal dissent, growing their corporate economy, and claiming ownership on Tibet. The I.O.C. has tacitly approved of every Chinese action and done nothing to hold Beijing accountable to the conditions that were initially set for them to host the Games.

China’s totalitarian exploitation of the Olympics in continuation of its repressive governance of the people of China and their military occupation of Tibet, along the I.O.C.’s disgraceful refusal to hold Beijing accountable, is shaping up to be the story of the 2008 Summer Games. The Times editorial board clearly gets it and to the extent that they may be a bellweather to how global press views the Games, this is a good thing. But we have a responsibility to tell this story, because it’s beyond clear that China and the I.O.C. don’t want it told at their Olympics.