La llama partirá el domingo por la tarde con destino Omán
AFP
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (13 abril 2008).- La Llama olímpica de los Juegos de Beijing 2008 finalizó este domingo sin incidentes su recorrido por las calles de la capital económica tanzana, Dar es Salaam, única etapa en África de su controvertido periplo por el mundo.
Su paso por la ciudad duró apenas una hora, durante la cual unos 80 relevistas recorrieron los cinco kilómetros de trayecto bajo una fuerte lluvia.
En el arranque de la ceremonia, el vicepresidente tanzano, Mohamed Shein, había encendido la antorcha antes de entregársela al ministro de la Unión, Seif Jatib, primer relevista del recorrido.
El programa inicial preveía un trayecto de 25 kilómetros a través de Dar es Salaam, que fue acortado, según las autoridades, debido al mal tiempo y no por el temor a manifestaciones pro-tibetanas como las que marcaron el paso de la llama por ciudades como Londres, París y San Francisco.
Pese a que no se había convocado ningún acto en Tanzania contra la organización de los Juegos de Beijing, centenares de policías patrullaron todo el recorrido, vigilado desde las alturas por un helicóptero de las fuerzas de seguridad.
La llama partirá el domingo por la tarde con destino Omán.
Cambia Australia recorrido
Australia cambiará el recorrido de la Llama olímpica, que está previsto que llegue el 23 de abril, con el fin de evitar nuevos incidentes como los registrados hasta ahora en otros países protagonizados por defensores de la causa tibetana.
"Estamos reexaminando el recorrido", declaró el domingo Ted Quinlan, organizador del relevo.
"El trayecto se hará probablemente por ejes más anchos, el público se mantendrá seguramente a distancia, y la seguridad será reforzada", precisó Quinlan.
El recorrido será anunciado 48 horas antes de la llegada de la antorcha olímpica a Australia.
"En los relevos de las ediciones anteriores (de los Juegos), se podía ver al portador de la llama dándole la mano a la gente (...). Será muy difícil hoy en día", añadió el responsable.
Los militantes pro-tibetanos ya advirtieron de que también organizarán manifestaciones no violentas en la etapa australiana.
April 13, 2008
Op-Ed Contributor
Faster, Higher, Stronger, No Longer
By BUZZ BISSINGER
Philadelphia
IN 1894, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, having refused the military and political careers typical of a French aristocrat, settled upon the revival of the Olympic Games as his life’s work. He saw sport as a higher calling, a religion. And he saw the Olympics as an event that would enhance and heighten moral virtue: “May joy and good fellowship reign, and in this manner, may the Olympic torch pursue its way through ages, increasing friendly understanding among nations, for the good of a humanity always more enthusiastic, more courageous and more pure.”
He is considered by many the father of the modern Games, first held in 1896 in Athens. But if he were alive today and witness to the Olympics over the past 40 years, he would almost surely come to the conclusion that his grand idea had failed, that idealism is no match for the troika of politics, money and sports.
The Summer Games in Beijing are four months away and already a predictable mess. The running of the Olympic torch resulted in arrests and nasty confrontations with the police last week in London and Paris amid protests against China’s recent crackdown in Tibet and other human rights abuses. In San Francisco, the only North American stop, the torch-bearers played literal hide-and-seek with protesters when the route was suddenly changed for security reasons. There have been repeated calls for heads of state to boycott the opening ceremonies. But protests and boycotts are no longer effective remedies.
There is only one way left to improve the Olympics: to permanently end them.
True, in the world of sports, any plan that puts morality over money is unlikely to happen. Commissions are formed only once the problem is over (see Major League Baseball) and the cheaters will always find another angle — you can bet that some lab somewhere is working on the design of a new steroid undetectable to testing (see every professional sport and many “amateur” ones). The loftier the rose-colored rhetoric, which in the Olympics has become an Olympian growth industry, the worse the underlying stink. And this is an institution that is rotted in so many different ways.
A short history:
In 1968, in what became known as the Tlatelolco massacre, government troops fired on thousands of student protesters in Mexico City 10 days before the Summer Games. Nobody knows exactly how many were killed, but the best estimate is 200 to 300.
Four years later in 1972, members of the pro-Palestinian group Black September took members of the Israeli team hostage from its quarters in the Olympic village in Munich; 11 died.
In 1976, the East German women’s swim team won 11 of 13 gold medals, a performance that was stunning — too stunning, since it was later revealed that hundreds of East German athletes had been using steroids for years to enhance performance.
In 1980, the United States and roughly 60 other nations boycotted the Games in Moscow because of the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan.
In 1984, although nation-by-nation medal counts are supposed to be against the very spirit of the Games, the performance of the United States in Los Angeles was ballyhooed. Such chest-beating only reinforced the inherent jingoism of the Games, since the Soviet Union and East Germany boycotted of course in retaliation for the American snub of Moscow. More important, 1984 became the first Olympics in which corporate sponsors got their hooks in deep, making the Games too often seem like one running advertisement.
As for the 1988 Games, in arguably the premier track event of the Olympics, the men’s 100 meters, the Canadian Ben Johnson was ultimately stripped of his gold medal after testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs. In addition, the host nation, South Korea, displaced 720,000 residents to build facilities. (According to an advocacy group, the Center on Housing Rights and Evictions, China has now more than doubled that figure to an estimated 1.5 million for its Games.)
In 1996, the Olympics in Atlanta were marred by a bombing that resulted in two deaths.
In 2000, the American track star Marion Jones won five medals, three gold, while taking performance-enhancing drugs, lied about it for seven years and is now in prison for perjury. In addition, 40 of China’s 300 athletes withdrew after seven rowers failed blood tests.
Before the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, it was revealed that backers, in trying to get the Games, had bribed officials of the International Olympic Committee with college scholarships, plastic surgery and free guns and skis. At those Games, one of the judges in the pairs skating competition admitted that she voted to ensure victory for the Russian team.
In 2004, the Greek government spent as much as $12 billion on the Summer Games in Athens, 5 percent of the country’s economy. Yes, part of that money went to the building of a new rail system and airport, but the Greek government also admitted it had no plan for what do afterward with many of the lavish facilities it was required to build for the Games.
At the 2006 Winter Games in Turin, Italy, policemen raided the Olympic residences of the Austrian ski federation for possible illegal use of performance-enhancing drugs; two members fled the country.
With the Summer Games approaching in August, one event has already started, the who-is-in-who-is-out opening ceremonies boycott over China’s record on human rights (as of the last tally, President Bush was in, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain were out and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France was on the fence).
But lest we as Americans feel too righteous, we should consider this: If the host country this summer were the United States, every visiting nation would have to consider either boycotting the opening ceremonies or withdrawing given a disturbing record of our own, which includes the occupation of Iraq and the abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay.
IT is, of course, unfair to make a sweeping condemnation of all the athletes who participate. “This is their chance to march into the Olympic stadium,” says Bob Costas, who will have his seventh turn as the prime-time Olympics host for NBC in Beijing. “It is the culmination of all their time and effort. Many of them come out of impoverished circumstances and they are exposed to more in two weeks than they might be in two years.”
It is the single best argument for the Olympics. But still not enough to overcome the sordid history.
A permanent end to the Olympics might actually not be that difficult. All it would really take is a single act of courage and morality by the United States to pull out of the Games forever on the basis that the mission is not coming close to being served. An American departure would severely dilute the Games since it would no longer be a world competition of anything.
But a far stronger factor in the exit of the American team would be the likelihood that American corporations would stop backing the Olympics with their megamillions. It would also severely diminish the willingness of American networks to continue to pay mind-boggling sums for the broadcast rights to the Olympics, which in the case of NBC was about $2.2 billion for the Games in 2010 and 2012. If Americans aren’t playing, Americans won’t watch.
In place of the Olympics, world championships would still be held in individual sports as they are now, but perhaps at permanent venues designed for optimum performance. This would be a good thing for athletes. For all the hype, the Games often don’t provide the greatest performances. In Athens, for example, there was not enough time to build a roof for the pool because of the huge construction project that the Olympics had become, exposing swimmers to hideous summer heat and the backstrokers to blinding sunlight.
Would some athletes become innocent victims with the loss of the Olympics? Yes. But it would be nothing close to the number of innocent victims killed in Darfur with Chinese-supplied weapons, or in Iraq during the American occupation.
The world would carry on without the Games. The ideals set forth by Coubertin when he revived them, instead of being routinely mocked as they are now, would be honored by the admission that the Olympics have simply failed.
Buzz Bissinger is the author of “Friday Night Lights” and “Three Nights in August.”
April 13, 2008
Op-Ed Contributor
China’s Loyal Youth
By MATTHEW FORNEY
Beijing
MANY sympathetic Westerners view Chinese society along the lines of what they saw in the waning days of the Soviet Union: a repressive government backed by old hard-liners losing its grip to a new generation of well-educated, liberal-leaning sophisticates. As pleasant as this outlook may be, it’s naïve. Educated young Chinese, far from being embarrassed or upset by their government’s human-rights record, rank among the most patriotic, establishment-supporting people you’ll meet.
As is clear to anyone who lives here, most young ethnic Chinese strongly support their government’s suppression of the recent Tibetan uprising. One Chinese friend who has a degree from a European university described the conflict to me as “a clash between the commercial world and an old aboriginal society.” She even praised her government for treating Tibetans better than New World settlers treated Native Americans.
It’s a rare person in China who considers the desires of the Tibetans themselves. “Young Chinese have no sympathy for Tibet,” a Beijing human-rights lawyer named Teng Biao told me. Mr. Teng — a Han Chinese who has offered to defend Tibetan monks caught up in police dragnets — feels very alone these days. Most people in their 20s, he says, “believe the Dalai Lama is trying to split China.”
Educated young people are usually the best positioned in society to bridge cultures, so it’s important to examine the thinking of those in China. The most striking thing is that, almost without exception, they feel rightfully proud of their country’s accomplishments in the three decades since economic reforms began. And their pride and patriotism often find expression in an unquestioning support of their government, especially regarding Tibet.
The most obvious explanation for this is the education system, which can accurately be described as indoctrination. Textbooks dwell on China’s humiliations at the hands of foreign powers in the 19th century as if they took place yesterday, yet skim over the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and ’70s as if it were ancient history. Students learn the neat calculation that Chairman Mao’s tyranny was “30 percent wrong,” then the subject is declared closed. The uprising in Tibet in the late 1950s, and the invasion that quashed it, are discussed just long enough to lay blame on the “Dalai clique,” a pejorative reference to the circle of advisers around Tibet’s spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.
Then there’s life experience — or the lack of it — that might otherwise help young Chinese to gain a perspective outside the government’s viewpoint. Young urban Chinese study hard and that’s pretty much it. Volunteer work, sports, church groups, debate teams, musical skills and other extracurricular activities don’t factor into college admission, so few participate. And the government’s control of society means there aren’t many non-state-run groups to join anyway. Even the most basic American introduction to real life — the summer job — rarely exists for urban students in China.
Recent Chinese college graduates are an optimistic group. And why not? The economy has grown at a double-digit rate for as long as they can remember. Those who speak English are guaranteed good jobs. Their families own homes. They’ll soon own one themselves, and probably a car too. A cellphone, an iPod, holidays — no problem. Small wonder the Pew Research Center in Washington described the Chinese in 2005 as “world leaders in optimism.”
As for political repression, few young Chinese experience it. Most are too young to remember the Tiananmen massacre of 1989 and probably nobody has told them stories. China doesn’t feel like a police state, and the people young Chinese read about who do suffer injustices tend to be poor — those who lost homes to government-linked property developers without fair compensation or whose crops failed when state-supported factories polluted their fields.
Educated young Chinese are therefore the biggest beneficiaries of policies that have brought China more peace and prosperity than at any time in the past thousand years. They can’t imagine why Tibetans would turn up their noses at rising incomes and the promise of a more prosperous future. The loss of a homeland just doesn’t compute as a valid concern.
Of course, the nationalism of young Chinese may soften over time. As college graduates enter the work force and experience their country’s corruption and inefficiency, they often grow more critical. It is received wisdom in China that people in their 40s are the most willing to challenge their government, and the Tibet crisis bears out that observation. Of the 29 ethnic-Chinese intellectuals who last month signed a widely publicized petition urging the government to show restraint in the crackdown, not one was under 30.
Barring major changes in China’s education system or economy, Westerners are not going to find allies among the vast majority of Chinese on key issues like Tibet, Darfur and the environment for some time. If the debate over Tibet turns this summer’s contests in Beijing into the Human Rights Games, as seems inevitable, Western ticket-holders expecting to find Chinese angry at their government will instead find Chinese angry at them.
Matthew Forney, a former Beijing bureau chief for Time, is writing a book about raising his family in China.
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