The American iconoclastic lawyer Clarence Darrow resigned himself to history’s repetitive nature, but never stopped challenging the powers to which most of us abandon control.
The British Olympic Team at The 1936 Berlin Olympics
Athletes have long been surrogates for our personal, school, community, and national wishes lies and dreams. We foist on them the responsibility of atoning for our own failures as sportsmen, parents and citizens. And visited on some are the the sins of governments who draft them as unwitting soldiers in wars of propaganda and ideology.
Section 51 of the International Olympic Committee charter, “provides for no kind of demonstration, or political, religious or racial propaganda in the Olympic sites, venues or other area.” That does not stop dozens of groups from calling on he most physically gifted and dedicated among us to end the bloodshed in Africa, restore the Dali Lama to sovereignty, or enforce Chinese intervention in Burma amid a long list of religious, humanitarian and political causes.
Many organizations are calling for a boycott of the XXIX Olympiad in Beijing to further their agendas. Many decry China’s denial of human rights while remaining silent as, paradoxically, some governments, namely New Zealand, Belgium and Great Britain are forbidding their team members to speak their minds before, or during the contest, or face immediate expulsion from the games. It is the western pot calling the tea kettle black.
As a former athlete and coach I might bow to tradtion and refuse to dip the flag for the Olympic reviewing stand, but I could never in good conscience sign any document that demanded surrender of a basic human right.
The web’s most articulate journalist-blogger, Rebecca McKinnon, writes with moving precision about the house arrest of Chinese human rights blogger Hu Jia , his wife Zeng Jinyang and the world’s “youngest political prisoner” their 2-month old daughter Hu Qianci. In the article, Rebecca clearly articulates Beijing’s poorly staged suppression of dissent during the dress rehearsal phase of its first leading role on the world stage. It is exactly this kind of scrutiny of the aging, fumbling power-elite that we might lose by disengagement.
To boycott the Olympics, an arguable failure of policy in Moscow and Los Angeles, moves the spotlight off China, punishes athletes in lieu of policies and leaves the average Chinese citizen, denied full access to information, angered and dazed by a seemingly xenophobic west. To even call for a boycott of the Olympics is to give spin doctors an award- winning script full of perfect, indignant replies to what we can only imagine to be true. Engagement in lieu of boycott will enlighten and inform us all. As the chinese proverb states, 拔苗助长 , you cannot help sprouts to grow by pulling them up.
I am hoping that history repeats only by way of expose made possible by athletic achievements–think Jesse Owens in Berlin– and not because of “free world” demands for the conscription of players into a silent Nazi salute to the abolition of free speech.
