Gold Medal in Tyranny
EDITORIAL Gold Medal in Tyranny In July 2001, when the International Olympics Committee (IOC) awarded the 2008 summer games to Beijing, the international community began a...
...Surely that absence refl ects the same naive view articulated seven years ago during the debate over the awarding of the Olympics...
...It is also “more complex...
...Nor is it due, apparently, to any changes in China’s human-rights practices...
...On March 10, a small group of monks in Lhasa, the capital of Chinese-occupied Tibet, went to the Jokhang Temple and began to chant “Free Tibet” and “Dalai Lama...
...Police dispersed the protest, arrested the ringleaders, and prevented monks from monasteries on the city’s periphery from joining in...
...Wouldn’t the Olympics be just another elevation in China’s “peaceful rise” to “responsible stakeholder,” great-power status...
...The security services have built checkpoints and roadblocks...
...The People’s Liberation Army appears to be running logistics and resupply for them...
...These are not isolated incidents...
...Dissidents and political prisoners are sentenced to a network of maximum-security psychiatric prisons in which they are penned with the dangerously insane and from which they have no chance of reprieve...
...Seven years later, we have our answer...
...On May 18, 2007, as Hu and his wife, fellow dissident Zeng Jinyan, were about to leave for an overseas speaking engagement, Hu’s house arrest was reinstated...
...Its policy of “noninterference” supports dictators in places like Sudan, North Korea, Burma, Iran, Venezuela, and Russia...
...policymakers to “throw a monkey wrench” into the “boldest market-oriented economic experiment in modern times...
...On December 27, 2007, police removed him from his home, where his wife and daughter were forced to remain...
...The phrase “human rights in China” is little more than a joke...
...The Chinese government’s response has been simple...
...And Beijing will respond positively...
...The police confi scated every piece of electronic communications technology Hu and Zeng possessed...
...boycott of the 1980 Olympics to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan...
...The “coercive birth limitation”—the One-Child policy—continues, too, “in some cases” resulting “in forced abortion or sterilization...
...And prosperity, while a great public good, is a meager substitute for the greater public good of natural rights such as the freedom to publicly oppose one’s government, to legitimate state authority through elections, and to worship God as one sees fi t. Not to worry, Brzezinski suggested...
...As then-White House spokesman Ari Fleischer put it in his press briefi ng on the day the Chinese got the games, the “president does not view this as a political matter...
...In China there is no presumption of innocence, no adversary system of justice, often no trial witnesses other than the defendant, no right against self-incrimination, “no protection against double jeopardy, and no rules governing the type of evidence that may be introduced...
...and the treatment of petitioners in Beijing...
...But “the situation with China” is “not only different,” he wrote in 2001...
...In the end only Hu’s mother was allowed into the courtroom...
...There clearly wasn’t a good reason, then, for China’s absence from the State Department’s list of the worst human rights violators...
...Back in 2001, a bipartisan coalition of American political and business elites supported the Chinese Olympics bid...
...According to the report, in 2007 “controls were tightened in some areas,” such as religious liberty in Tibet and the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, “freedom of speech and the media, including the Internet...
...A prominent Chinese dissident has been put on trial in Beijing on charges of subverting state power...
...Quite the contrary...
...The “regime as a whole is still committed to one-party dictatorship...
...Three days before Hu’s trial began, authorities informed his wife that she would not be allowed to attend...
...And any Chinese who dare say as much in public face harsh penalties...
...This year, for the fi rst time, the People’s Republic of China has been left off the list of the world’s worst human-rights violators...
...It will have no other choice...
...the same facile argument American elites—Democrats and Republicans, academics and bureaucrats, lobbyists and corporate titans—have peddled for two decades: that our economic engagement with China would lead inevitably to political liberalization...
...But the yak was out of the bag, so to speak...
...But don’t believe your lying eyes...
...Folks in China also have a tendency to disappear...
...EDITORIAL Gold Medal in Tyranny In July 2001, when the International Olympics Committee (IOC) awarded the 2008 summer games to Beijing, the international community began a thought-experiment...
...This now is an opportunity for China to showcase itself as a modern nation,” Fleischer said...
...They regulate the fl ow of people into and out of the contested areas...
...Hundreds of people have been detained...
...The road that led Hu to the Beijing Number One Intermediate People’s Court is long...
...One of them, the AIDS and environmental activist Hu Jia, stood trial last week on charges of subverting state power...
...Between August 2006 and March 2007, he spent 214 days under house arrest...
...The day after the IOC made its historic announcement, former Carter national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski— who these days advises Barack Obama—took to the Times op-ed page to disavow any parallel between the 1980 Moscow Olympics and the 2008 Beijing games...
...And as we go to press late on March 20, reports are that the Chinese authorities largely have reestablished control...
...There were many who had faith that the Chinese Communists would see the Olympics as a chance to reform...
...Brzezinski had helped plan the U.S...
...The New York Times editorialized that “there is reason to hope that the bright spotlight the Olympics can shine on the Chinese government’s behavior over the next seven years” will benefi t “those in China who would like to see their country evolve into a more tolerant and democratic society...
...The Bush administration was offi cially neutral on the Beijing bid...
...A verdict is expected this week...
...Wouldn’t holding the games in China give the world’s democracies “leverage” over that country’s Communist dictatorship...
...Among them was the chairman of the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, future Massachusetts governor and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who told reporters shortly before the games were awarded to Beijing that the “Olympics are about building bridges, not building walls...
...It is a resounding “No...
...Things will work out...
...Internet access is policed by the ever-moresophisticated sentinels of the Great Firewall...
...During this time his daughter was born...
...There have been hunger strikes, acts of self-immolation, some attacks on the ethnic Han Chinese majority, sit-ins, marches, and candle-light vigils...
...The State Department’s annual report on human rights details an uptick in China’s already dismal practices...
...Over the last couple of weeks, riots have broken out in Tibet and surrounding areas and been suppressed by brute force...
...Nor is the Tibetan uprising isolated...
...There were other serious abuses, the report continues, including “extrajudicial killings, torture and coerced confessions of prisoners, and the use of forced labor...
...The Olympics will only intensify the “pressures for change...
...Tibet continues to be repressed...
...The protests continued and over the last few weeks have spread to Gansu, Qinghai, and Sichuan provinces...
...China is nonetheless becoming a much more open society,” because millions of Chinese “now have access to satellite television dishes” and “even to the Internet...
...Thousands of the People’s Armed Police have been mobilized...
...China is ratcheting up its defense spending...
...This does not seem to be happening, however...
...On the evening of March 6, Teng Biao, one of Hu’s lawyers, was forced into a vehicle and taken to an undisclosed location, where he was told that it was not in his interest to talk to foreign journalists about Hu Jia and human rights violations in China...
...Applications from Hu’s lawyer to meet with his client were denied until February 4, 2008, at which time the police supervised the meeting...
...Sure, Brzezinski continued, “grievous human rights abuses are being committed by the Chinese government...
...Matthew Continetti, for the Editors...
...The Dui Hua Foundation, a San Francisco-based nonprofi t, has found that in 2007 Chinese arrests for “endangering state security” were at their highest level since 1999...
...This follows a doubling of such arrests between 2005 and 2006...
...Hu faces up to fi ve years in prison...
...Far from imposing democratic pressure on Beijing, the Olympic games seem to have done the exact opposite: They have emboldened the Chinese dictatorship in its constant quest to obliterate any chance the country has for a real politics...
...China’s absence isn’t due to diplomatic considerations in light of the upcoming Olympics, acting assistant secretary of state Jonathan Farrar cautioned reporters...
...This summer seems like a pretty good occasion to start it...
...The number of offi cially reported “public order disturbances” has been on the rise for several years...
...Apparently not...
...Which raises some serious questions about our China policy...
...Of course, hundreds of millions of Chinese have nothing but dirt...
...The former Clinton national security adviser Samuel Berger wrote a Washington Post op-ed entitled “Don’t Antagonize China” in which he argued that the “world looks different from China” and that it makes “no sense” for U.S...
...The trial was brief...
...Their telephone line was disconnected...
...From home, Hu continued to sign his name to essays drawing attention to the depravities of the Chinese government...
...Lhasa has been sealed off...
...Isn’t it time we had a grown-up discussion about China’s persistent authoritarianism...
...It has used all available force, including deadly force, to crush the protests, while it heavily censors the information the world receives about them...
...those practices have gotten worse...
...In related news, on March 11, as unrest in Tibet was intensifying, the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor released its annual country reports on human rights practices...
...We don’t know how many people have died in the uprising— the numbers range from 16 (Beijing’s offi cial tally) to more than 80 (the estimate from the Tibetan government-in-exile in India...
...Wouldn’t the increased media attention and “scrutiny” force Beijing to relax its security apparatus and increase civil liberties...
...The experiment has failed...
...What little provision for due process the law affords, the authorities tend to ignore...
...Soon other Tibetans joined them...
...Dozens have been arrested...
...The hypothesis that hosting the Olympics would mellow Beijing’s ruthlessness has been proved false...
...In addition, according to the State Department report, in 2007 “the party and state exercised strict political control of courts and judges, conducted closed trials and carried out administrative detention...
Vol. 13 • March 2008 • No. 28
