Germans Join the Open Ceremonies Boycott
I assume their athletes will still be attending. Still, interesting.
The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, yesterday became the first world leader to decide not to attend the Olympics in Beijing.
As pressure built for concerted western protests to China over the crackdown in Tibet, EU leaders prepared to discuss the crisis for the first time today, amid a rift over whether to boycott the Olympics.
The disclosure that Germany is to stay away from the games’ opening ceremonies in August could encourage President Nicolas Sarkozy of France to join in a gesture of defiance and complicate Gordon Brown’s determination to attend the Olympics.
Donald Tusk, Poland’s prime minister, became the first EU head of government to announce a boycott on Thursday and he was promptly joined by President Václav Klaus of the Czech Republic, who had previously promised to travel to Beijing.
“The presence of politicians at the inauguration of the Olympics seems inappropriate,” Tusk said. “I do not intend to take part.”
Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Germany’s foreign minister, confirmed that Merkel was staying away. He added that neither he nor Wolfgang Schäuble, the interior minister responsible for sport, would attend the opening ceremony…
While expressing scepticism about a complete boycott, he did not rule one out. “This is not the right moment to talk about a boycott … We should watch how the Chinese government deals with the situation in the next weeks and months.”
If Merkel and others do not attend the opening ceremony, it is likely to reinforce a growing sense in China that the Olympics is being used to vilify the host.
China had hoped to use the games to highlight its economic development and growing openness. But it is increasingly proving an opportunity for critics to bash China’s one-party political system, human rights abuses, treatment of minorities and tightly controlled media.
Nicely done. Only thing I’d prefer is “this situation and others”.
Dangle that carrot!
Comment by Rojas — 3/30/2008 @ 11:51 pm
I wonder if the US was hosting the Olympics what other countries would do?
We certainly have committed far more horrible acts during the last 6 years than China.
Comment by daveg — 4/1/2008 @ 2:19 pm
Care to quantify that, with numbers and some sort of metric for deciding what’s a ‘more horrible act’? I don’t know where I’d begin, personally. I guess that you’re primarily thinking of some activities in Iraq carried out by US forces or ‘contractors’, or perhaps you’d add everything that has happened in Iraq… It appears that there were problems with the Lancet study (although despite Bush’s kneejerk disagreement with it, the cluster sampling methodology is clearly the only way that stuff can be assessed; of course, you’d have no chance of doing the same thing for assessing the effect of Chinese policies, particularly on their own rural population).
Personally, I think that boycotting the opening ceremony is a mistake, because appearing at it isn’t an explicit approval of the Chinese regime. It just looks like they’re too gutless to call a full-scale boycott of what really counts, their atheletes, although that’s better done by national federations rather than governments in any case (and it’s best when it’s for sporting reasons, as the South African boycott was). I don’t have a problem if they don’t wish to appear, particularly if it’s to spend time doing something more worthwhile instead, but announcing as a protest looks relatively silly to me.
I also don’t get particularly excited about China in any case, which looks to me to be set on a better modernisation trajectory than Russia, which went too far, too fast and with virtually no organisation, nearly collapsed and then rebounded to something potentially quite unpleasant. People need to have some patience.
Comment by Adam — 4/1/2008 @ 2:52 pm
Worse than China? No. Sorry, but no.
If we wish for China to become something impressive, then surely the correct way to do so is to reward steps in the right direction and withhold rewards when those steps are absent. I decline to patronize China as if the nation were an ill-behaved child whose outbursts would somehow be cured through an infusion of “self esteem”.
This Olympics is an attempt by the Chinese government to validate its existing policies in the eyes of the world and in the eyes of its own populace. It is a referendum on the repressive status quo. I vote no, as you’re aware; but the MINIMUM we all ought to agree on is that the possibility of a boycott be on the table so that the nation perceieves a risk to the sort of pre-Olympic “cleanups” we’ve seen lately.
Comment by Rojas — 4/1/2008 @ 3:46 pm
I don’t think we should forget that, as China needs the US, the US (and the rest of the West) need China. In any case, as I say, I think that China’s progressing pretty well even from our point of view, given how huge it is and its communist history.
You are right in part about the Chinese government’s motives, but there’s more to it than that. The possibility of a boycott of any description is clearly always on the table, for every event, but I don’t think that the Chinese come close to meriting it. That’s doubly true for a boycott by national teams, of course, but also for the opening ceremony, which is more about the Olympics themselves than it is about the country in which they are hosted.
Comment by Adam — 4/1/2008 @ 3:56 pm