Hillary is Against the Olympics: Why is Sport Being Mixed With Politics?

The candidate for the presidency of the United States, Hillary Clinton, is calling upon the president of the country, George W. Bush, to boycott the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics if China doesn’t improve its human rights record.

Besides the turmoil in Tibet, Clinton has reproached the Chinese government for not putting enough pressure on the Sudanese government to end the “genocide in Darfur.” “At the present moment and in light of the recent events, I hope that President Bush doesn’t plan to partake in the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics if the Chinese government doesn’t make essential changes, ” stated Clinton.

Clinton isn’t the first politician to use the sporting event as a means to put pressure on China. As already written in Pravda.ru, the European Parliament as a whole and the President of France Nicolas Sarkozy in particular, have already threatened to boycott the Olympic games if China doesn’t control their conflict with the Tibetans. Actually, the International Olympic Committee can enact sanctions against those who chose to boycott and keep those countries from participating in the next couple of Olympics. “If there isn’t a compromise in sight, I think that a boycott would be justified. We shouldn’t exclude the possibility of a boycott of the Beijing Olympics. We want them to take place, but not at the expense of a cultural genocide of the Tibetans, ” said the speaker of the European Parliament Hans-Gert Pottering.

Likewise, the head of the Polish government, Donald Tusk, stated that he will not be partaking in the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics. “I do not intend to take part in the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics,” he said in an interview in the newspaper Dzenik. Tusk explained his position as a response to the excessive use of force by China during the events in Tibet.

We should note that St. Petersburg is the only European city in which the procession of the Olympic torch did not face any resistance from the inhabitants of the city. Elsewhere the procession was continuously followed by protesters acting in the name of freedom for Tibet. In the northern capital, the torch was ran on April 5. Recognizable persons from the Russian Federation carried the torch throughout the streets of the city, for more than 20 kilometers. The international part of the torch relay will conclude on April 29 in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Then the Olympic torch will pass through Chine provinces. The final leg of the journey will take place on August 6 in Beijing, where the lightening of the flame will begin the Summer Olympic Games.

We’ll remind our readers that the situation in Tibet worsened in March 10, on the 49 anniversary of the 1959 uprising, which ended in the expulsion of the 14th Dalai Lama. At the time, in Lhasa , the capital of the autonomous region, unsanctioned demonstrations took place, that called for freedom for Tibet. The peak of the conflict was between March 14-16, when pogroms began in Lhasa, and the Chinese military sent in the military. According to official Chinese sources, 13 people died. But the supporters of the exiled spiritual leader of Tibet, the casualties of the conflict included 80 dead and 72 wounded.