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College Tribune | September 30th 2008
Features News
“One World One Drea Justin Moran of Amnesty International speaks to Steven Kelly about the legacy of the Beijing Olympics. “One World One Dream” the mantra of the Beijing Olympics 2008 acted as a creed to herald a newly rejuvenated China promoting an accessible benign and progressive nation, but did they cement this legacy? A succession of detrimental press reports commenced in 2001, years before any torch was lit prompting Chinese officials to work doggedly in order to nullify negative media portrayals. The Beijing Olympics have been compared to the Berlin games of 1936 under the German Reich, temporarily masking the dictatorship and repression before promptly returning to the core violation of human rights. According to Justin Moran, Amnesty International Ireland was “extremely disappointed by the missed opportunity to enforce human rights”. China’s vast human rights’ violations issues reportedly loomed large over the ceremony. These ranged from problems surrounding freedom of speech and the press, issues regarding protester detainment and torture, the persecution of protestant Christians, the one-child policy, Chinese rule over Tibet, the communist country’s position regarding Taiwan, and China’s involvement in Darfur. These issues, particularly the Free-Tibet campaign, caused worldwide protests prompting many to target the route of the torch relay. This in turn led to the Dali Lama requesting the torch relay to remain peaceful adding “Over one billion Chinese brothers and sisters feel really proud of that. We should respect that.” Moran argues that “there has
been a slight improvement for journalists” following international outcry over freedom of information as promised by the Chinese government. Meanwhile, the one-child policy established in 1979 continued to act as a blemish on China’s utterly manufactured Olympic image. Zhang Weiqing the minister in charge of the National Population and Family Planning Commission exclaimed valiantly last year “Because China has worked hard over the last 30 years, we have 400 million fewer people”. Family planning laws has created what has been dubbed the “four-twoone” problem, which leaves couples in
“Following the Olympics it is going to be more difficult to administer human rights” charge of one child and four parents. Nearly 30 years after its introduction there appears to be no relaxation in this population curtailment policy. The regulation of population has raised macabre concerns worldwide regarding forced abortions, abandonment and infanticide of female infants deemed “undesirable”. Moran notes that the Irish government “continue to raise issues through private contacts” reflecting the response of the Irish people to the litany of human rights’ violations. “The Human Rights for China postcard
campaign resulted in 7,000 postcards being sent to Taoiseach Brian Cowen. There was huge enthusiasm for action amongst local groups, the concern is to maintain this acknowledgement of human rights’ violations.” Coerced abortions and sterilisations were said to be commonplace in China during the mid 1980s. Although abandonment, gender-selected abortion and infanticide have been outlawed in China there may be still considerable doubt in the world’s media regarding the enforcement of family planning laws. Sporadic reports of coerced abortions in particular pertaining to cases where the mothers were unmarried have plagued China’s record. As Moran contends, “Following the Olympics it is going to be more difficult to administer human rights”. The increased glare from the Olympic media spotlight has done little to ameliorate China’s negation of fundamental human rights. The greatest concern facing athletes was not in fact human rights’ violations but in reality air pollution. Stagnant smog clouds tainted the preceding ceremonies, impelling Olympic organisers to invoke such drastic measures as withdrawing half the city’s 3.3 million vehicles off the roads, impeding most construction and closing some factories in the city and surrounding provinces. This trepidation caused some countries to provide medical checks for respiratory problems in their athletes. Many athletes also chose to train outside of Beijing. Health concerns were further illuminated when four members of the
U.S. cycling team wore facemasks upon disembarking the plane on arrival. Hans Troedsson the head of the World Health Organisation in China commented that only long-term exposure to pollution would cause health problems. Troedsson remarked that the environmental efforts invoked by the Chinese Government might result in “a public health legacy after the
A grim harvest in China Sam McGrath speaks to Gerald O’Connor of the Irish Falun Gong Information Centre and examines the claims of organ harvesting of Falun Gong prisoners Allegations that the Chinese Government engages in organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners date back to as early as 2001, with the most recent accusations having arisen from a series of articles published by The Epoch Times in March 2006. The Epoch Times, an anti-Chinese communist weekly newspaper which was founded by Falun Gong members, broke the story through an interview with a Chinese reporter who they claimed worked for a Japanese television news agency. The individual, who they referred to as Mr. R, claimed that “Falun Gong practitioners detained in forced labour camps and prisons are killed for their organs”; which are then sold to medical facilities. The newspaper published a series
of interviews, with mostly anonymous eyewitnesses, throughout the following month. A “former employee of Liaoning Provincial Thrombosis Hospital of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine” informed The Epoch Times that a “concentration camp in Sujiatun was actually part of a hospital” where it engaged in the removal and selling of organs from still-conscious Falun Gong practitioners. She went onto allege that since 2001 the concentration camp had imprisoned 6,000 Falun Gong members - none of whom had survived. Gerald O’Connor of the Irish Falun Gong Information Centre declares “There is much evidence to prove that organ harvesting is still happening today”. O’Connor goes on to state that he personally believes the “CPC
(Chinese Communist Party) has a limited future in China and when their totalitarian rule ends, people will be ashamed of themselves when they fully realise what was going on and how they did nothing to help”. Falun Gong is a Chinese spiritual discipline that mixes Taoist and Buddhist principles. It emerged in 1992 as one of the many Chinese practices of self-cultivation, known as Qi Gong,
which loosely means ‘energy work’. Following an unprecedented growth in the Falun Gong movement (in 1999 it claimed to have 40 million more members than the Communist Party), the Chinese government became alarmed and began a nationwide persecution that lasts to this day.
Olympics”. As regarding the lip-syncing of Lin Miaoke in the opening ceremony, Wang Wei, Executive Vice |President of the organising committee stated, “I don’t see there is anything wrong with it if everybody concerned agrees” This staging and obsession with a perfect Chinese aesthetic proved to be yet another tipping point in the now