Should we all boycott Olympic Games in China?

Should we all boicot Olympic Games in China? Do you agree or support the Boycott Beijing 2008? Yes or no? Why?

| | | | |
10 reasons for

Yes, we should boycott Beijing 2008

  1. Gilles opinó:

    Human rights violations

  2. Anonymous opinó:

    Will have the running
    ?

  3. shiu [2] opinó:

    ohh.. and one more thing. why don’t we stop this game forever and try and save the sinking earth. within2-3 yrs countries like Maldives will be under water. so i suggest that we stop the games and star saving th world. if the demolish that bird nest and water cube and plant trees, at least the people of China will be able to see each others face when the polluted air gets a little bit cleaned :>

  4. shiu [2] opinó:

    yes we should boycott Beijing. u see it is a lot of wast of money. in my point of view, all the money spent on making the WATER CUBE and the BIRD NEST could have been spent on the poor people of the country. then they will say that there are no poor people in that country. who will believe this. there wont be a single country without poor people living there. and one more thing, not all countries can be involved in the Olympic games. only developed, rich countries can take part in it. So, this is my view about this.

  5. bobaboba opinó:

    i think that we shouldnt boycott the olympic games in china. the fact that china is not following the human rits is shit because The U.S army is not respecting human rits in Iraque to my eyes.

  6. Anonymous opinó:

    No

  7. tchyao [1] opinó:

    I’m pro a complete boycott of the 2008 OG.

    China should never have had the OG. It is not a democratic country. It is a Maoist system working for its own good. In their mind, people right is not even existing. Their goals are trillions kilometers away from the Olympic spirit. The Chineese government is just trying to polish its image.

    Demonstrations around the world are good. It revealed the true face of china. We see Mao’s picture rising again. We see manipulated protesters exactly as in the Cultural Revolution period.

    I’m also upset about the way the Olympic Commitee, western corporations and western government have been and are manipulated by the Chineese. How the hell the french badge stating “for a better world” (“Pour un monde meilleur”) could have been rejected by the OC as for being against the OG spirit.

    I come to the conclusion that neither government nor athletes will ever boycott the games. Nevertheless, as end target of the show, I can just turn off my TV. This is exactly what we should do.

  8. China sucks opinó:

    Repression continues in China, six months before Olympic Games

    When the International Olympic Committee assigned the 2008 summer Olympic Games to Beijing on 13 July 2001, the Chinese police were intensifying a crackdown on subversive elements, including Internet users and journalists. Six years later, nothing has changed. But despite the absence of any significant progress in free speech and human rights in China, the IOC’s members continue to turn a deaf ear to repeated appeals from international organisations that condemn the scale of the repression.

    From the outset, Reporters Without Borders has been opposed to holding the Olympic Games to Beijing. Now, a year before the opening ceremony, it is clear the Chinese government still sees the media and Internet as strategic sectors that cannot be left to the “hostile forces” denounced by President Hu Jintao. The departments of propaganda and public security and the cyber-police, all conservative bastions, implement censorship with scrupulous care.

    Around 30 journalists and 50 Internet users are currently detained in China. Some of them since the 1980s. The government blocks access to thousands for news websites. It jams the Chinese, Tibetan and Uyghur-language programmes of 10 international radio stations. After focusing on websites and chat forums, the authorities are now concentrating on blogs and video-sharing sites. China’s blog services incorporate all the filters that block keywords considered “subversive” by the censors. The law severely punishes “divulging state secrets,” “subversion” and “defamation” – charges that are regularly used to silence the most outspoken critics. Although the rules for foreign journalists have been relaxed, it is still impossible for the international media to employ Chinese journalists or to move about freely in Tibet and Xinjiang.

    Promises never kept

    The Chinese authorities promised the IOC and international community concrete improvements in human rights in order to win the 2008 Olympics for Beijing. But they changed their tone after getting what they wanted. For example, then deputy Prime Minister Li Lanqing said, four days after the IOC vote in 2001, that “China’s Olympic victory” should encourage the country to maintain its “healthy life” by combatting such problems as the Falungong spiritual movement, which had “stirred up violent crime.” Several thousands of Falungong followers have been jailed since the movement was banned and at least 100 have died in detention.

    A short while later, it was the turn of then Vice-President Hu Jintao (now president) to argue that after the Beijing “triumph,” it was “crucial to fight without equivocation against the separatist forces orchestrated by the Dalai Lama and the world’s anti-China forces.” In the west of the country, where there is a sizeable Muslim minority, the authorities in Xinjiang province executed Uyghurs for “separatism.”

    Finally, the police and judicial authorities were given orders to pursue the “Hit Hard” campaign against crime. Every year, several thousand Chinese are executed in public, often in stadiums, by means of a bullet in the back of the neck or lethal injection.

    The IOC cannot remain silent any longer

    The governments of democratic countries that are still hoping “the Olympic Games will help to improve the human right situation in China” are mistaken. The “constructive dialogue” advocated by some is leading nowhere.

    The repression of journalists and cyber-dissidents has not let up in the past seven years. Everything suggests that it is going to continue. The IOC has given the Chinese government a job that it is going to carry out with zeal – the job of “organising secure Olympic Games.” For the government, this means more arrests of dissidents, more censorship and no social protest movements.

    This is not about spoiling the party or taking the Olympic Games hostage. And anyway, it is China that has taken the games and the Olympic spirit hostage, with the IOC’s complicity. The world sports movement must now speak out and call for the Chinese people to be allowed to enjoy the freedoms it has been demanding for years. The Olympic Charter says sport must be “at the service of the harmonious development of man, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity.” Athletes and sports lovers have the right and the duty to defend this charter. The IOC should show some courage and should do everything possible to ensure that Olympism’s values are not freely flouted by the Chinese organisers.

    The IOC is currently in the best position to demand concrete goodwill gestures from the Chinese government. It should demand a significant improvement in the human rights situation before the opening ceremony on 8 August 2008.

    And the IOC should not bow to the commercial interests of all those who regard China as a vital market in which nothing should be allowed to prevent them from doing business.

    No Olympic Games without democracy!

    Reporters Without Borders calls on the National Olympic Committees, the IOC, athletes, sports lovers and human rights activists to publicly express their concern about the countless violations of every fundamental freedom in China.

    After Beijing was awarded the games in 2001, Harry Wu, a Chinese dissident who spent 19 years in prisons in China, said he deeply regretted that China did not have “the honour and satisfaction of hosting the Olympic Games in a democratic country.”

    Russian dissident Vladimir Bukovsky’s outraged comment about the holding of the 1980 Olympics in Moscow – “Politically, a grave error; humanly, a despicable act; legally, a crime” – remains valid for 2008.

  9. philosophergurl [1] opinó:

    For those of you who choose to boycott, I am sooo with you on this. I was pretty pissed about the Darfur thing and equally irritated about Tibet. I even dedicated a brief post to it in my blog… but yours is much more informative and I love the images. If our government won’t step in and do the honorable thing by at least boycotting the opening and closing ceremonies then we as citizens should exercise our right to put our foot down and conscientiously object. The only reason that China is being allowed to host the Olympics is because they have a strong economy which they only obtained by exploiting people’s rights and resources. But considering how much our own government is responsible for, I’m really not surprised that the current administration would take such a dismal and ridiculous stance. I am really disappointed that our nation’s leaders haven’t shown much integrity when it comes toward respecting and uplifting humanity… unless it serves the best interest of their bottom line.
    Dr Martin Luther King Jr said, “A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan.” He’s not lyin! Unfortunately the current leaders of the so-called “free world” are determined to take us all to hell with them with the choices that they make and the issues that they choose to ignore. You can read more about my views on this subject @ http://www.philosophergurl.blo.....ycott.html

    Spreading the love, and speaking out for the people,

    -philosophergurl*

    “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it. ”
    -Martin Luther King, Jr.

  10. Jamie F. opinó:

    Sure Sam, but China doesn´t respect anything. We must oblige them to free Tibet.

11 reasons for

No, we shouldn´t boycott Beijing 2008

  1. Dave Metric opinó:

    No, because if we boycott the Olympics that would be tax money that was wasted (yes I’m implying that the Olympics is funded with tax money).

  2. I love electric guitar [13] opinó:

    China is no more evil than the USA, probably less so. They have as much as a right to profit as anywhere else.

  3. Hakeem WIlliams [1] opinó:

    Hello i am am a rndom guy saying that poverty affected the olypics duhhhh!!!1 im brianless

  4. anon [1] opinó:

    I am a Chinese citizen, and I think we shouldn’t boycott Olympic Games. In my opinion, the people who want to boycott Bejing Olympic games are ridiculous. If you think that our government is not really good , then so? It doesn’t affect us, or the Olympic games. Chinese citizens like me are ever so honoured about the fact that our country is holding the 2008 Olympic games, and nobody would spoil it for us. So to the people who want to boycott Olmpics, then do so: but to the sensible people who don’t want to boycott Olympics, then congratulations because you’re making a wise decison.

  5. Anonymous opinó:

    Wow, talk about self righteous. And egotistical. The US isn’t the center of the world. In its rights or its wrongs. Thank you for proving this by bringing the US to the center of the conversation instead of what this is really about- Boycotting 2008 Olympics. I’m just stating this so you won’t repeat the stupid mistake in the future. Second, the US is not at fault for everything. Sorry, it can’t be the center here either despite the fact that everybody wants somebody to be at fault and are too cowardly to look at themselves and examine their own role in the world. “The West, particularly the US, has a human rights record that has
    created suffering around the world.” If you say it, back it up. Where’s your facts. America may be the first in line with many wrongs, but the third person in line is still in the same line. So quit hiding. At least in Iraq they went in with good intentions, even if some motives were attached.

  6. whataslacker opinó:

    unfortunately two votes need to be moved over here (#5Anonymous / #6bobaboba). Why boycott the games hey are not a political arena?

    And really the games should boycott the US for the current state of war.

  7. Anonymous [1] opinó:

    What bothers me is the self-righteous Westerners’ failure to examine themselves in the same light.

    China has a shaky record on human rights, but the West, particularly the US, has a human rights record that has
    created suffering around the world.

    Just months before the opening of the Beijing Olympics, China now faces a grave situation in Tibet.

    In Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, weeklong peaceful demonstrations for Tibet’s autonomy turned into deadly riots Friday. The rioters now hold an area of the city, surrounded by government forces.

    With biased reporting from the media and common misconceptions of the China-Tibet relationship, many Westerners are quick to condemn China and its human rights record, and the call to boycott the summer Olympics is renewed.

    The demonstrators question China’s historical claim over Tibet, a topic that arguments can be made for both sides.

    While Tibet has enjoyed prolonged periods of practical autonomy in the past, beginning in the 13th century, Chinese dynasties from Yuan to Qing had always claimed it within their borders.

    In other words, while China’s claim over Tibet may not be absolute, it is infinitely more legitimate than the United States’ claims over Texas, Hawaii and Puerto Rico.

    Those who chant the “free Tibet” slogan must understand that for all practical considerations, Beijing can’t allow Tibet to split from the central government.

    Strategically, Tibet, with its vastness and geographical obstacles, serves as an important buffer region against India.

    Taking Tibet out of China’s grasp would leave the rich and populous province of Sichuan and the inner provinces exposed and vulnerable.

    More importantly, Tibet is not the only region in China calling for its independence:

    Muslim separatists in Xinjiang province and the island of Taiwan are paying close attention to how Beijing handles the Tibet situation.

    Granting it independence, or even showing any signs of weakness, will set a dangerous precedent and encourage other separatist movements in the country.

    While I am deeply worried about the situation in Tibet, I remain optimistic that it will be resolved with minimal bloodshed. After the Tiananmen Square incident in 1989, Beijing knows better than to repeat history in Lhasa.

    As for those who fear an ethnic cleansing following the riots, they should ask themselves: What do you know about the China-Tibet relationship?

    China’s treatment of Tibet suggests the exact opposite. In the past two decades, it has invested heavily in Tibet without consideration of economic returns.

    Huge sums were spent in improving the region’s transportation – including building a railroad that connects Tibet to the rest of the country, diversifying its economy and providing free education to Tibetans.

    What bothers me more is the self-righteous Westerners’ failure to examine themselves in the same light.

    One cannot dispute that China has a shaky record on human rights, but one would be equally ignorant to say that the West, particularly the United States, has a human rights record to be proud of.

    Currently, the United States and the rest of the “coalition forces” remain in Iraq, locked in a five-year-old war that, if presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain has his way in the election, may last another 100 years.

    According to a September 2007 survey by Opinion Research Business, the estimated total number of war casualties in Iraq since the 2003 invasion exceeded 1.2 million.

    Reports of U.S. soldiers and mercenaries committing atrocious crimes surface regularly, yet the so-called human rights advocates don’t seem to care.

    One doesn’t hear calls to investigate the United States’ handling of the war and the staggering civilian casualties, yet riots in Tibet can raise overwhelming sympathy and finger-pointing from the West.

    It’s safe to say that Beijing doesn’t have the patent to hypocrisy.

    Countries act in their self-interests. Sometimes such acts are controversial, and often one country’s self-interest conflicts with others’.

    China is no exception, but at least it doesn’t cry foul at the first news a controversy emerges in another country. The West should do the same.

  8. ME [1] opinó:

    A prospective boycott will just destroy the opportunity to discuss the problems around the human rights with the Chinese government.
    This is a new start and a new possibility for China to be a better country and to be more open to the world.

    Politics and sports should be kept apart. It’s not a political arrangement, but an opportunity for the world’s best athletes to compete.

  9. Anonymous opinó:

    let’s leave people the freedom to participate or watch the olympic games. If people who want to start riots or engage violent demonstrate, they should expect police to step in no matter which country they are in. It is French’s shame that local government lets violent demonstrators interrupt olympic torch without arresting the offenders. SF did better, but failed to keep all demonstrates at peace while allow most peacefully people to witness the pass of the torch.

  10. Alex L. opinó:

    Many people argue that the Chinese government was wrong to have used force to suppress the protests of monks and civilians. But is it really wrong? If in Australia, large groups of Aboriginals threw stones at police and set shops on fire, is it wrong for our police to use force to stop it? The Aboriginals, like the Tibetans, would claim it was protest for injustices of past invasions and slaughter. The Native Americans could do exactly same. Since when is it ever wrong to use force to preserve social harmony? The way I see it, these protesters, whether they’re just housewives, plumbers or monks, are wrong for disturbing the peace. Violence never solves anything, it is simply an irrational outlet and method of protest and anger. I support China; it is entitled to use force to preserve peace in its society. And who are we to condemn them, when we would do the same?

    Many people also condemn China for its poor standard of human rights. We love to comment on how terrible it is to work in sweat-shops, to not have the right to free speech etc. But we are forgetting that even in our own countries, our human rights are not perfect either. The US has a comprehensive Bill of Rights, so in order to abuse and torture people, it sets up a detention centre off American soil: Guantanamo Bay. Australia’s ethnic minorities have suffered immensely for the past hundred years or so. Our own politicians have compared their poverty to Third World countries. So all of this begs the question: why condemn China’s protection of human rights, when we are not perfect ourselves? Who are we as ‘role models’ as democracy, if we can’t help and protect our own?

    The Chinese have spent $40 billion on this Olympics. This is their one opportunity to showcase their country and make visible effort to improve themselves for international display. Boycotting does nothing and has achieved nothing in the past, except for increasing political tensions. Besides, we should not forget that the Olympics is about sport. It is about the athletes, not their governments. We should leave politics at the door. Let us not be blind to the progress that China has made already. Let us not forget that Tibet, under Chinese rule, has enjoyed much economic growth (almost 600% improvement since 1994). The Chinese government even exempts Tibet from taxation and provides 90% of Tibet’s government expenditure. If anything, Tibet should be grateful and appreciative at its economic and social situation. It should stop and carefully consider the implications of independence.

    Loading…
    Hide notes

  11. Sam Burton opinó:

    Nop, politics don´t mix with sports.