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http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/editorial/story.html?id=23447b71-a171-45ea-a646-7b58fc7bdfdb

Hands off the torch

We should be ashamed at the violent attacks on this international symbol of peace


RICHARD W. POUND, Freelance

Published: 7 hours ago
We learn from history that we do not learn from history.

- Georg Hegel

It is not uncommon for the world to wonder, usually well after the fact, why the Olympic Games were awarded to the particular city and to second-guess the decision of the International Olympic Committee. There is a predictable rhythm to such questioning, almost always within the final year of preparations.


The choice of Beijing has proved to be no exception. Seasoned Monday Morning Quarterbacks are already reminding the world that the seeds of the current tensions had been identified even before the 2008 Olympic Games were awarded to Beijing in 2001 and are posing the rhetorical question of whether the International Olympic Committee had been out of its mind when it chose Beijing as the host of its marquee event.

The recent violence directed at the international segment of the Olympic Torch Relay has attracted the predictable media attention to the controversial elements of the relationships between China as a whole and Tibet. This is not a new problem, but one that has existed for centuries and was inherited by the People's Republic of China as successor to previous Chinese governments.

That the question is complex and highly charged as an issue within China goes almost without saying. The issue has also attracted a certain degree of international attention, exacerbated by the media focus on the upcoming Games, scheduled to begin on Aug. 8. Supporters of Tibet have mobilized several well organized initiatives, all intended to raise the profile of their platform, using the 2008 Games as the vehicle for that purpose.

The propensity of those with issues to hold hostage other unrelated activities is well known, however inappropriate such actions might be. The impetus to use the Olympic Games in Beijing comes as no surprise. Nor does the convenient timing of the current campaign to link the Tibet issue with the Games. It is well short of coincidence that the campaign has built up to its present level some four months prior to the opening ceremony of the Games.

What has been particularly disappointing to date is the degree of violence and the attack on what is regarded as a symbol of international peace and friendship, namely the Olympic torch relay. Tibet's supporters have bungled an opportunity for mounting a visible, peaceful and dignified protest against China and have, instead, chosen violent confrontations, thereby giving up whatever high moral ground they might otherwise have occupied.

There are some current, thus far isolated, calls for a boycott of the Beijing Games. This is an unfortunate reversion to earlier and unsuccessful times when it might have been believed that Olympic boycotts were effective tools for influencing international behaviour.

The short answer to this is that such boycotts have been universally unsuccessful. Even before the African boycott of the Montreal Games in 1976, earlier similar actions passed virtually unnoticed and had not the slightest impact on the target countries. The Montreal boycott simply pointed out the intellectual bankruptcy of the countries that targeted New Zealand for non-Olympic sport contacts with South Africa while ignoring far more extensive contacts with large countries like the United States.

The U.S.-led 1980 boycott of the Moscow Games was a pretext for the response to a crisis that never existed: The Soviet intervention in Afghanistan was simply to prop up a faltering client state, not a pre-emptive strike in the direction of Middle East oil or a challenge to the national interests of the Western democracies.

The retaliatory, but spectacularly unsuccessful, Soviet boycott in 1984, when Los Angeles was host to the Games, was the beginning of the end of Olympic boycotts by serious governments. They were unsuccessful political initiatives that did not have the desired impact on the target countries and which succeeded only in penalizing the athletes of the boycotting countries - all with no gain to the boycotters.

A balance sheet of the 1980 Canadian boycott shows this: The entire Canadian "outrage" regarding the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan amounted to reducing Aeroflot flights between Canada and the Soviet Union from four per week to three, cancelling a ballet tour and the Olympic boycott, all in a year in which Canada sold more wheat to the Soviet Union than at any time in the history of their relationship. The Soviets stayed in Afghanistan and Canadian athletes who had trained for years to participate in the Olympic Games were sacrificed as pawns in a public-relations exercise.


The same parallel, however ludicrous it might have been in 1980, does not exist in 2008. The Tibet problem has been with the world for centuries. It will not be solved if a few athletes do not participate in the international festival of youth that is the Olympic Games. The failure to resolve the Tibet problem rests with China and the international political community. It should not be laid at the feet of young athletes and used as a pretext to deny them the positive international experience of the Games.
If political figures, having assessed the political and other consequences of their behaviour, wish to remain aloof from the Games, so be it. But let them have the intellectual courage to do that on their own and not force Olympic athletes to be their unwilling proxies. We have been there, done that, in 1980. It did not work then. It will not work now.

Richard W. Pound is a long-time member of the International Olympic Committee and was the president of the Canadian Olympic Committee in 1980, when the Canadian government required a boycott of the Moscow Games.

春江花月夜

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