[Marxism] Tibet and the `Olympic tradition'

[glparramatta <glparramatta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

http://www.greenleft.org.au/2008/747/38634

[see also Pierre Rousset's comment at http://www.links.org.au/node/361]


  Pro-Tibet protests grow — why Tibet deserves justice


Tony Iltis
19 April 2008


*ACT police have been given enhanced stop-and-search powers for dealing 
with protests planned for the Canberra leg of the global Olympic torch 
relay on April 24. This comes as protests by the Tibetan diaspora and 
their supporters have turned the torch’s world tour into a public 
relations disaster for the Beijing Olympics.*

In London and Paris, protesters attacked the flame with fire 
extinguishers and attempted to wrest it from the torch-bearers. In San 
Francisco, last-minute route changes meant that direct confrontation was 
avoided, but activists scaled the Golden Gate Bridge to display banners.

Furthermore, torch-bearer Majora Carter unfurled a small Tibetan flag, 
causing her to be evicted from the relay (and handed over to the police) 
by the attendants who have been accompanying the torch around the world. 
“Apparently, I’m not a part of the Olympic torch-bearing entourage 
anymore”, she said.

‘Sacred Flame Protection Unit’

These attendants flanking the torch are officers of China’s paramilitary 
police. Euphemistically styled the “Sacred Flame Protection Unit”, they 
attracted attention in Paris and London with their snappy blue 
tracksuits and the zeal with which they carried out their duties. A 
British Olympic official privately described them as thugs.

In Canberra, they will not be running alongside the flame, but confined 
to a bus. ACT and federal politicians have indicated that local police, 
armed with their increased powers, will render thugs from overseas 
unnecessary.

On April 17, the New Delhi leg of the relay took place, according to the 
BBC, without incident. It also took place without an audience, other 
than a small number of dignitaries plus the 15,000 police and 
paramilitary forces who sealed off the city centre.

The distance covered by the relay in New Delhi was reduced from 9km to 
2.3km. These precautions reflect that India is keen not to alienate 
China, an important trading partner, but is also home to the world’s 
largest Tibetan refugee community, which numbers more than 100,000 and 
includes the Dalai Lama and his “government in exile”. More than 180 
Tibetans were detained trying to breach the security cordon.

On April 16 more than 50 Tibetans were arrested in New Delhi at protests 
at the Chinese embassy, at the hotel at which the torch was kept and at 
the airport. On April 17 Tibetans held an “alternate” torch relay 
elsewhere in Delhi, claiming that legitimising a dictatorial regime was 
contrary to the intention behind the Olympic torch relay tradition.

Ironically, the Olympic torch tradition was, in fact, invented for 
precisely that purpose — by Hitler’s propagandists for the 1936 Berlin 
Olympics.

The Beijing Olympics are not an aberration. Neither were the Berlin 
games. Since their inception at the beginning of the 20th century, the 
Olympics have been controlled by a committee drawn from the world’s 
elites and accountable to neither athletes nor the public. The 
antithesis of participatory sport, this mass spectator event is most of 
all about corporate sponsorship and marketing.

Olympic tradition

The April 16 /Asian Times/ reported that a spokesperson for sponsor 
Coca-Cola condemned Majora Carter’s display of the Tibetan flag, saying: 
“It’s unfortunate that Ms Carter used an invitation to participate in 
the torch relay as a platform to make a personal political statement. We 
firmly believe the Olympics are a force for good that celebrate the best 
in sports, and we are proud to support the Beijing 2008 Olympics.”

Undeniably, the Olympics are a “force for good” when it comes to the 
profits of the large corporations that sponsor it — something petty 
concerns over events such as the recent gunning down of more than 100 
Tibetans struggling for self determination by Chinese authorities should 
not be allowed to interfere with.

The Olympics’ purportedly non-political nature has never stopped tyrants 
from using them as a platform for self-aggrandisement, but it has been 
used to silence critics of the status quo.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) had nothing to say about the 
massacre of student protesters that formed the backdrop to the 1968 
Mexico City games. However, when two African American athletes at the 
same games, standing on the podium to receive their medals after the 200 
metre race, raised their fists in a “black power” salute in support of 
the civil rights struggle back home, the IOC expelled them from the 
Olympics.

Massacring protesting students is one thing, but a symbolic, peaceful, 
public display of anti-racism was a crime the Olympic officials could 
not be silent in the face of.

While Western politicians and media have expressed the pious hope that 
hosting the Olympics would improve China’s human rights record, the 
opposite has happened. An Amnesty International report released on April 
1 revealed that the approach of the games has led to a crackdown on 
dissidents in Beijing, many of the victims being housing rights 
activists protesting against Olympics-related evictions.

Unfortunately, this too is in line with Olympic traditions. For example, 
the 1996 Atlanta games were accompanied by laws criminalising 
homelessness that allowed authorities to remove poor people from 
run-down inner-city districts, facilitating highly profitable 
redevelopment.

The 2000 Sydney games were accompanied by the introduction of laws 
increasing police and security powers, including allowing the army to be 
deployed against demonstrators. These laws anticipated the erosion of 
civil liberties under the “war on terror” that began a year later — 
culminating in the lock-down and “police state”-style siege of the city 
during the APEC summit last year.

Western hypocrisy

The pro-Tibetan protests against the torch relay have provoked 
counter-protests by Chinese migrants and overseas students in a number 
of Western cities, with protests occurring in Sydney and Melbourne on 
April 13.

These were largely ignored by the Australian media, despite both rallies 
drawing crowds of 5000. Chinese students are planning to converge on 
Canberra on April 24 to stage a counter-demonstration against the 
anti-torch relay protests of Tibetans and their supporters.

The size and passion of these mobilisations by Chinese communities in 
the West reflects anger at Western media bias and hypocrisy.

In an April 7 article posted on/ /Counterpunch.org, Israeli peace 
activist Uri Avnery contrasts the sympathetic Western media coverage of 
Tibet’s struggle (which he supports) to that of other nations struggling 
for self-determination — citing Kurdistan, Western Sahara, the Basque 
Country, Corsica, Chechnya, Tamil Eelam and Palestine as examples.

He attributes this partly to the fact that China is an economic rival of 
the West, its regime “hated … by capitalists because it is a Communist 
dictatorship, by Communists because it has become capitalist”, and also 
that Tibet’s history as a mysterious Himalayan kingdom has given it a 
romantic aura.

Indeed, the prominence of Tibet in Western consciousness owes much to 
the Dalai Lama’s success in convincing entertainment industry 
celebrities such as Richard Gere and the Beastie Boys that Tibet was 
historically a spiritual paradise. (It was, in fact, a country of 
impoverished serfs exploited by a theocratic nobility.)

Avnery contrasts this with Muslim nations struggling for 
self-determination who must contend with the fact that “in the Western 
world, Islamophobia now occupies the place that had for centuries been 
reserved for anti-Semitism”.

Interestingly, the cause of the Uighurs, whose struggle for 
self-determination against Beijing — in the face of brutal repression — 
broadly parallels that of the Tibetans, is largely unreported in the 
West. The Uighurs are Muslim.

Self-determination struggle

However, it would be wrong to conclude that this Western media bias 
indicates that the West supports Tibetan independence. During the Cold 
War this was the case — the CIA gave support, including military 
support, to Tibetan independence groups as part of its attempt to 
undermine the Chinese Revolution.

However, with China reintegrating into the global capitalist economy, it 
is the destination for a huge amount of Western investment. China’s 
economy is subordinate to Western capital. Imperialism may play the 
Tibet card to remind China of its place in the global capitalist 
hierarchy, but it would be against its interests to dismember China — 
which has become the industrial estate of global capitalism. Western 
economic interests have increasingly penetrated into Tibet itself, which 
is facilitated by Chinese control of the region — maintained by repression.

Tibetans deserve the right to self-determination because it is a 
democratic right. The desire of many Tibetans for independence reflects 
the fact that after 50 years of Chinese rule, Tibetans are marginalised 
second-class citizens in their own country.

That the Western media paints Tibetans more favourably than, for 
instance, Palestinians, does not make either people undeserving of 
democratic rights. In fact, the simple, spiritual Tibetan Buddhist and 
the deranged Arab terrorist are equally racist stereotypes. Everyone who 
supports the principles of social justice should support the growing 
global movement in solidarity with Tibet’s struggle for self determination.


From: International News, Green Left Weekly issue #747 
<http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2008/747> 23 April 2008.


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