A bit of Olympic Political History

Jack Lynch

Clinton called for Bush to stay away from the Olympics opening ceremony in China as a protest for Tibet and failure to bring a response in Darfur. As protestors disrupt the torch run through London and Paris, it is easy to imagine the world’s free nations looking towards an actual boycott of the games in Beijing in August.

Replacing the Olympic torch runners with a preserved human figure from the Bodies exhibition, given that they are allegedly constructed from the bodies of executed Chinese prisoners, might be a good image of Chinese insensitivity to human rights. Why not?

A Chinese court recently sentenced Hu Jia – a prominent rights activist to jail.

The crackdown on Tibet leads the recent news. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued a statement defending the rights issue and pointing at the Olympics.

China for its part calls the torch run a journey of harmony through the world.

For my two cents, the US should cancel attending the games at all, and let China sit on its own bird’s nest stadium, on its rotten egg of human abuse and environmental degradation. The Olympics have been political since 776 BC in Greece. Holding them and winning was always a laurel, and one that the Chinese regime does not deserve in any regards.

The Summer 1980 Olympics boycott was a protest over Russian invasion of Afghanistan.

In 1984 Moscow boycotted our Los Angeles Olympics due to so called ‘anti-Soviet’ hysteria. Five years later the Berlin Wall fell and the Western world entered an era of freedom and military supremacy that remains strong today. China actually came back to the Olympics at the 1984 games.

For over two decades, South Africa was banned from Olympic participation because of racial apartheid.

Also historically unforgettable is the 1936 Berlin ‘Nazi’ Olympics. Recall it with a US Holocaust Museum exhibition.