Quote:
Originally Posted by cacophony
see, i disagree with this view. there seem to be two arguments with regards to the validity of the games this time around:
1) china's human rights violations make it an ill-suited venue and the games should be boycotted in order to send a message.
2) the games are about athletes who train hard and deserve to compete, so leave politics out of it.
my big problem with #2 is that it implies that athletes are somehow a special reserved class of people who should be coddled and cushioned and kept from disappointment because they "work hard." well you know who else works hard? the people who fight to have their voices heard in a country that squashes the freedom of its citizens. i don't understand how the idea of someone skiing down a slope or flipping around a pommel horse outweighs the importance of basic human rights.
the games should be boycotted. period. i'm willing to let a small minority of competitive jocks be disappointed, if it sends a greater message about the lives and welfare of innocent people.
and let's just set aside this whole "good will" crap. the olympics are not about good will. they're about advertising dollars and ridiculous jingoistic shows of competitiveness.
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I don't think that
"athletes are somehow a special reserved class of people" but I don't think that athletes should be taken as a pretext or as "hostages", precisely for something as important for them as Olympics Games & specially to balance the failures of politics regarding human rights and/or companies making business with China (& closing their eyes/hears about what happens there...).
Athletes can also, while in the Games, speak or show messages or wear a badge (as they do in France now) or boycotting the opening ceremony, etc...
I think that what happens now should be in the hands of politics but apparently they're not doing/saying anything significant against the situation in Tibet (& in China). They should have started in the 50's when China invaded Tibet, companies should have started by imposing conditions (re: minimum human rights levels, freedom of press, death penalty, etc...) before going there. And nobody did.
I'll finally add that if everybody was boycotting everything which wasn't clean regarding human rights, there will be a lot of things in a lot of countries which should be boycotted... & no need for that to go as far as China... (randomly & totally non exhaustively : Burma, Afghanistan, Russia, Irak, pharmaceutical laboratories, death penalty, torture, Guantanamo, Irak, Monsanto, freedom of press, etc...).
I think people should shout, people should demonstrate & resist, people should talk to people & most of all people should vote & elect the correct people at the correct places. Always. Period.