Five waves of the flag, a toss of his flaxen locks and it was done, London had officially taken over from Beijing as the next Olympic city. Boris looked only a little flustered and the eight minute exhibition showcasing British culture managed not to be quite as embarrassing as had been forecast by some, although it was decidedly underwhelming in comparison with the extravagant pageantry of the closing ceremony. Still what can you expect in only eight minutes and with a mere £2.5 million to play with?
The 29th Olympiad is a hard act to follow, even while recognising that there had been a dark side to the Beijing Olympics. However no point in dwelling too much on the negative, like the human rights abuses in today’s China. The point is to look forward to London 2012 and concentrate on the legacy “we” will leave to the world of sport after the London games have drawn to a close. Boris Johnson said as much when he promised, before flying back from Beijing, that "tens of millions of pounds" will be spent to coach and prepare children for the London games. The Mayor proclaimed that the Olympics would provide "a massive sporting legacy for London" saying he wanted to "ring-fence" the London Development Agency (LDA) for sport to provide the required facilities and the coaching and training opportunities for upcoming young athletes. David Beckham expressed similar hopes.
So why are so many people moaning about rising costs and the disruption to the capital in the four years ahead? Or like Will Self in his Evening Standard column, who opined that "What the Olympics are truly all about is money, nationalism in patriotic garb and a spurious kind of self congratulation." Indeed. Or are those of us who have been pointing to the flaws in the whole enterprise and directing people's attention to the very real social and economic problems already appearing in the areas around the Olympic site, just a lot of brutal kill-joys out to wreck people's enjoyment of a fantastic celebration of sporting prowess?
Well, according to one report: "There is no doubt that the Olympics will bring about permanent change to the economy of East London, the question is what kind of change? Here lies the challenge. The problem is that previous Olympics have failed to help the most economically disadvantaged groups living in the area where the Games have taken place. In the UK, flagship regeneration projects in East London and elsewhere have also failed to improve the well-being of local residents. The Docklands development is the most glaring example."
Will the London Games be any different to "previous Olympics"? From the viewpoint of the present moment it doesn't look like they will. Protest groups are active in Stratford and areas around the site. People are mourning the loss of the Manor Gardens allotments which last year were dug up to make way for an access road to the stadium, a wonderful resource enjoyed and productively worked for generations gone in a matter of hours. A football field where local children played also ploughed up in the interests of "big" sport. So much for the value of healthy outdoor exercise and governmental exhortations to eat the required five a day fruit and veg!
Residents of flats and low rent housing are fighting to protect their homes, not knowing if any compensation offered will be sufficient to pay for homes elsewhere. Exploitative and dangerous labour conditions are another issue. Previous Games including Athens and almost certainly Beijing, have been paid for with the lives of workers killed in the hurried completion of stadia and other facilities. There are also serious environmental concerns and worries about cost, £9.5 billion so far and rising. Causes for complaint? I should think so.
Team GB returned yesterday to tremendous acclaim - quite right that they should be congratulated on their record-breaking haul of medals. When the medal euphoria wears away those who don’t agree with the official consensus that the Olympics will be a terrific boon and benefit, will have to be written off as saddos in need of urgent rehabilitation. But as the British government doesn't have the luxury of the Chinese authorities’ sledgehammer methods of rule, so more subtle methods of "persuasion" will have to be employed. A conformity of opinion will have to be instilled through the media, advertising, enthusiastic endorsements of elite athletes and the active collaboration of sporting bodies. The healthy scepticism of the British public will need to be smothered for the duration of the preparations for the Games to the final triumphant hosting of the 30th Olympiad. Keep the momentum going and the distractions coming.
Resistance needn't be futile however. Increasing numbers of people are pointing to uncomfortable truths and exposing the commercial interests, elitism, arrogance and corruption surrounding the Games. So we needn't be afraid of expressing criticism or of questioning the need for the Olympic spectacle. Sport is good, international sporting events can be valuable in fostering cooperation and understanding between peoples but do we really need this four-yearly over-financed, bloated, ultra-capitalist monstrosity that is the modern Olympics foisted on us in exchange for the dubious privilege of being able to say "The Olympics came to London and all I got was this lousy T-shirt that fell apart in the wash and to top it all, I can't even find anywhere to ride my bike"?
Fiona Harrington
For revolutionary solutions to create a sustainable, not-for-profit economy in place of global capital alongside a real democracy based on People’s Assemblies. Visit our web site at www.aworldtowin.net
Showing posts with label Beijing Olympics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Beijing Olympics. Show all posts
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
The real Chinese heroes
It is two weeks to the start of the Beijing Olympics and while the athletes settle into their spanking new village, they might spare a thought for the thousands of Beijing residents who normally earn their living by picking and recycling rubbish. The city authorities this week rounded them up and shipped them out for the duration.
And while authorities claim journalists can interview any willing citizen, they won’t hear the stories of the hundreds who used to head for the capital to petition central government over local abuses. Last October, the authorities bulldozed the shanty town where most out-of-towners end up and since then made sure these malcontents don’t make it to Beijing.
The Olympic village is fully-equipped with broadband wi-fi. But throughout 2007, the censors took down hundreds of websites and blocked access to thousands of others for Chinese citizens. Human Rights Watch has tested the “improved human rights” promised to the Olympic authorities, and found that:
“Ordinary citizens face immense obstacles to accessing justice, in particular over issues such as illegal land seizures, forced evictions, environmental pollution, unpaid wages, corruption, and abuse of power by local officials, a situation that fuels rising social unrest across the country.”
There is a continuing revolt against the corrupt bureaucracy of the Chinese Communist Party, with hundreds of demonstrations, strikes and protests across the country. A ruthless Stalinist-style resettlement programme is uprooting whole populations for both economic and political reasons. Tibetan herders are forced to resettle in cities for no other reason than to destroy the culture and cohesion of Tibetan society. And around four million people will be forced from their homes by the gargantuan Three Gorges Dams project.
China will field the biggest Olympics team with 639 participants and some will become famous worldwide. But there is another roll-call of Chinese heroes – the many hundreds of political prisoners. Like Chen Yuping, sentenced to one and a half years hard labour in May 2008. Fellow workers elected Chen to represent them during lay-offs by the state-owned Jilin petroleum company. He applied to the city authorites for the right to organise an independent trade union and was jailed as a punishment.
Kong Jun got two years for “disrupting government institutions" and "disturbing social order". She and a fellow activist from Shandong province organised protests against managers at the Huamei Garment Company. They had not paid workers’ wages or national insurance for over a year before declaring the firm bankrupt.
Kong Youping got 15 years in September 2004 for “subversion of state power”. Formerly chairman of the official trade union at a state-owned enterprise in Liaoning province, he supported laid-off workers and criticised government corruption. He was sacked, and then joined others in the struggle to form an independent union.
Jiang Cunde was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1990, commuted to 20 years in 1994, on trumped up charges. Jiang was working at the Dong Xin Tool Repair Works in Shanghai, when he called for Chinese workers to “imitate the model of Poland’s Solidarity Trade Union to overthrow the present political powers”.
These and other brave individuals represent many millions of Chinese workers in struggle against the arrogant and corrupt Stalinist government. The word for “solidarity” in Chinese is tuandui jingzhen. Learn what it sounds like – we could be hearing it voiced by millions in the near future.
Penny Cole
And while authorities claim journalists can interview any willing citizen, they won’t hear the stories of the hundreds who used to head for the capital to petition central government over local abuses. Last October, the authorities bulldozed the shanty town where most out-of-towners end up and since then made sure these malcontents don’t make it to Beijing.
The Olympic village is fully-equipped with broadband wi-fi. But throughout 2007, the censors took down hundreds of websites and blocked access to thousands of others for Chinese citizens. Human Rights Watch has tested the “improved human rights” promised to the Olympic authorities, and found that:
“Ordinary citizens face immense obstacles to accessing justice, in particular over issues such as illegal land seizures, forced evictions, environmental pollution, unpaid wages, corruption, and abuse of power by local officials, a situation that fuels rising social unrest across the country.”
There is a continuing revolt against the corrupt bureaucracy of the Chinese Communist Party, with hundreds of demonstrations, strikes and protests across the country. A ruthless Stalinist-style resettlement programme is uprooting whole populations for both economic and political reasons. Tibetan herders are forced to resettle in cities for no other reason than to destroy the culture and cohesion of Tibetan society. And around four million people will be forced from their homes by the gargantuan Three Gorges Dams project.
China will field the biggest Olympics team with 639 participants and some will become famous worldwide. But there is another roll-call of Chinese heroes – the many hundreds of political prisoners. Like Chen Yuping, sentenced to one and a half years hard labour in May 2008. Fellow workers elected Chen to represent them during lay-offs by the state-owned Jilin petroleum company. He applied to the city authorites for the right to organise an independent trade union and was jailed as a punishment.
Kong Jun got two years for “disrupting government institutions" and "disturbing social order". She and a fellow activist from Shandong province organised protests against managers at the Huamei Garment Company. They had not paid workers’ wages or national insurance for over a year before declaring the firm bankrupt.
Kong Youping got 15 years in September 2004 for “subversion of state power”. Formerly chairman of the official trade union at a state-owned enterprise in Liaoning province, he supported laid-off workers and criticised government corruption. He was sacked, and then joined others in the struggle to form an independent union.
Jiang Cunde was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1990, commuted to 20 years in 1994, on trumped up charges. Jiang was working at the Dong Xin Tool Repair Works in Shanghai, when he called for Chinese workers to “imitate the model of Poland’s Solidarity Trade Union to overthrow the present political powers”.
These and other brave individuals represent many millions of Chinese workers in struggle against the arrogant and corrupt Stalinist government. The word for “solidarity” in Chinese is tuandui jingzhen. Learn what it sounds like – we could be hearing it voiced by millions in the near future.
Penny Cole
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
The nightmare Olympics
The Beijing government is struggling to hide the truth about how ordinary people in China are paying for this summer’s Olympic Games by muzzling the Internet and arresting outspoken journalists and critics. At the same time, ordinary people in villages throughout the country, even around Beijing itself, are paying heavily for the staging of the Games.
Cyber-dissident, Lu Gengsong has just been sentenced to four years in jail for “inciting subversion of state power”. Lu is a 51-year-old freelance writer who published a book called “Corrupted Officials in China” in 2000. He also revealed a large number of illegal eviction cases. The arrest of another leading critic of the government, Hu Jia, was made public at the weekend.
Hu’s crime was that he had spoken via video-link to a European Parliament committee, criticising his country’s human rights record in relation to the Olympics. A US-based group working for political prisoners, Duihua, said: “From the perspective of the authorities, to take this high-profile rights activist out of action in the final months before the Olympics may have been too good to pass up.”
But as the government tries to silence oppositionists, an army of bloggers (47 million and growing) are playing cat and mouse with half a dozen censorship bodies and 30,000 staff whose job it is to monitor the Internet. Chinese hosting companies themselves block access or police chat rooms, while Google, Microsoft and Yahoo voluntarily censor material. Yahoo has even handed over information to the Chinese authorities, which led to the jailing of two journalists.
Hundreds of miles south east of Beijing, a huge canal is being constructed to divert billions of gallons of water to provide for athletes and visitors to the Games. But farmers have been forced to abandon their rice crops as large areas have become arid as water supplies dry up. Since Beijing has only an eighth of China’s average water reserves per resident, the £30 billion plan is to divert water from the Yangtze River in central China. Dai Qing, an environmentalist critic of the Three Gorges Dam project, has noted: “While they have created previously unknown wealth, it is a wealth made possible by the avaricious consumption of natural resources”.
Meanwhile, as an elite with connections to the Chinese bureaucracy grow fabulously rich through speculation and land grabs, the mass of the population is excluded. The experiences of 800 villagers in Heiquiocum, in the Beijing suburbs, are typical. They have to make do on 200 yuan (about $25) a month. Their homes have been enclosed by a circular test track for freight trains, which make a thunderous noise every few minutes and deprive residents of sleep. According to one South Korean newspaper, “children with grimy black faces, reminiscent of the wasted waifs roaming from North Korea, are common sights in Heiqiaocun’s market. Their faces are filthy because they don’t have enough water to bathe.”
It’s not only political freedom and water, which are in short supply, however. Fresh air is just as hard to come by in the Olympic city, which expects more than three million visitors. Pollution levels are so high that athletes like runner Haile Gebrselassie has said he may skip the marathon because of pollution fears. Levels in Beijing are far higher than the last four Olympic venues. The Beijing Olympics ought to be renamed the Nightmare Games for the price the Chinese people are paying to stage the event.
Corinna Lotz
Secretary, A World to Win
Cyber-dissident, Lu Gengsong has just been sentenced to four years in jail for “inciting subversion of state power”. Lu is a 51-year-old freelance writer who published a book called “Corrupted Officials in China” in 2000. He also revealed a large number of illegal eviction cases. The arrest of another leading critic of the government, Hu Jia, was made public at the weekend.
Hu’s crime was that he had spoken via video-link to a European Parliament committee, criticising his country’s human rights record in relation to the Olympics. A US-based group working for political prisoners, Duihua, said: “From the perspective of the authorities, to take this high-profile rights activist out of action in the final months before the Olympics may have been too good to pass up.”
But as the government tries to silence oppositionists, an army of bloggers (47 million and growing) are playing cat and mouse with half a dozen censorship bodies and 30,000 staff whose job it is to monitor the Internet. Chinese hosting companies themselves block access or police chat rooms, while Google, Microsoft and Yahoo voluntarily censor material. Yahoo has even handed over information to the Chinese authorities, which led to the jailing of two journalists.
Hundreds of miles south east of Beijing, a huge canal is being constructed to divert billions of gallons of water to provide for athletes and visitors to the Games. But farmers have been forced to abandon their rice crops as large areas have become arid as water supplies dry up. Since Beijing has only an eighth of China’s average water reserves per resident, the £30 billion plan is to divert water from the Yangtze River in central China. Dai Qing, an environmentalist critic of the Three Gorges Dam project, has noted: “While they have created previously unknown wealth, it is a wealth made possible by the avaricious consumption of natural resources”.
Meanwhile, as an elite with connections to the Chinese bureaucracy grow fabulously rich through speculation and land grabs, the mass of the population is excluded. The experiences of 800 villagers in Heiquiocum, in the Beijing suburbs, are typical. They have to make do on 200 yuan (about $25) a month. Their homes have been enclosed by a circular test track for freight trains, which make a thunderous noise every few minutes and deprive residents of sleep. According to one South Korean newspaper, “children with grimy black faces, reminiscent of the wasted waifs roaming from North Korea, are common sights in Heiqiaocun’s market. Their faces are filthy because they don’t have enough water to bathe.”
It’s not only political freedom and water, which are in short supply, however. Fresh air is just as hard to come by in the Olympic city, which expects more than three million visitors. Pollution levels are so high that athletes like runner Haile Gebrselassie has said he may skip the marathon because of pollution fears. Levels in Beijing are far higher than the last four Olympic venues. The Beijing Olympics ought to be renamed the Nightmare Games for the price the Chinese people are paying to stage the event.
Corinna Lotz
Secretary, A World to Win
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