Ah, The Human Race

Ah, The Human Race

Today China, tomorrow India? In the pro-Tibet, anti-repression march, are we on sure ground?

ROHIT MAHAJAN
What The Rights Groups Say

Amnesty International Doesn’t support boycott of the Olympic Games, sees them “as an opportunity to get some results” on human rights. Will do the same for the 2010 Commonwealth Games in New Delhi.

Olympics Watch Doesn’t advocate a boycott, but wants international pressure to influence China’s policies

Human Rights Watch Doesn’t support boycott, but is urging heads of state to attend the opening/closing ceremonies only if China makes key rights improvements. Will “probably not” advocate boycott of the 2010 Commonwealth Games.

PUDR Does not support boycott of the Olympics or Commonwealth Games. Says such calls can only arouse chauvinistic feelings in China or India. But will use the Games to highlight human rights issues.

PUCL Is against boycott of the Olympics, any cultural or social event. But says it’s alright to highlight issues related to that specific event-the issue of the displacement of people to clear the site for the Commonwealth Games, for instance.
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As the Beijing Olympic torch relay spat raged on, turning into the sort of event it was not meant to be, Indian Olympic Association president Suresh Kalmadi decided to jump in and give it a fresh twist with a pointed query. “We’re hosting the Commonwealth Games in 2010, what if some nations want to boycott it, citing our rights violation record in Kashmir?” Not exactly a darling of anyone other than those in his Lok Sabha constituency of Pune, Kalmadi’s comment was, for once, right on the button.

It’s like that old parable: if the Olympics must go only to a land free of sins, they would be hard pressed to find a worthy venue on this planet. The world’s nations stand arraigned on charges of trampling upon the rights of their own people, and if Amnesty International is to be believed, only five countries have a near-zero record in rights violations. You have the world’s most powerful nations engaged in wars on foreign shores based on duplicitous, discredited arguments. Indeed, the moral compass of the times has been misplaced. That loss is accompanied by a loss of speech, for few can take the high moral ground to condemn China’s role in Tibet. Most others have their own past and present marred by injustice and iniquity. Everyone is on slippery ground.

But Kalmadi wasn’t speaking up for the world’s downtrodden. He was merely cautioning those fanning the flames of trouble for the torch’s truncated run in Delhi. His message: keep it quiet, for India has skeletons of its own in its cupboard. All of our rights groups, at home and abroad, agree—India’s record on human rights is deplorable.

Yet Kalmadi’s pleas to keep it under the radar doesn’t find much resonance among civil liberties groups, which insist that moral activism must be independent of national allegiance. Mukul Sharma, director of Amnesty International in India, asks, “Why should it be seen from the prism of an India vs China or China vs the US binary? We must not think that since we’re Indians, and don’t have a good human rights record, we shouldn’t talk about China.” Yet Sharma isn’t an advocate of boycotts, believing it only hardens the resolve of the country placed under the scanner. It then reacts, squashing the rights of people more severely.

But there are those who justify a call for boycott in all ‘abnormal situations’. Colin Gonsalves of the India Centre for Human Rights and Law is unequivocal in his demand for the boycott of the Beijing Olympics and, yes, even the Commonwealth Games.”Of course, there ought to be a boycott of the 2010 Commonwealth Games!” he told Outlook. “For one, the site of the games village was built by demolishing slums on the Yamuna riverbed. And India has a poor record of human rights, from Kashmir to Gujarat to the Northeast. India has gone to trade in Darfur even after the western nations withdrew. The government even supports Myanmar’s inhuman military regime.”

Sophie Richardson of Human Rights Watch, New York, also has her gloves off while slamming India. “India has its own, extremely serious human rights problems. Primary among them is the culture of impunity. The government’s failure to publicly prosecute officials or security forces that commit human rights abuses has led to discontent and anger. In Jammu and Kashmir or in the Northeast, the army has been responsible for serious crimes such as torture and extra-judicial killings.”

So, since all states are culpable in rights violations, how would the boycott of a sporting event help? Well, it wouldn’t. Which is why most human civil liberties groups are not seeking a boycott of the Beijing games. Instead, they want to use the Olympics to highlight human rights issues and mount diplomatic pressure on China to initiate meaningful talks with the Dalai Lama.

T. Kumar, advocacy director for Asia & Pacific at Amnesty International in the US, says the pressure on world leaders, including President George Bush, is intensifying. “Since Bush is planning to visit Beijing during the Olympics, we are putting pressure on him. We want Bush to meet some Chinese political prisoners, Uighurs, Tibetans,” he told Outlook. “We also want Bush to make a strong statement. The White House is open to this, but until it happens we won’t know.”

Now activists are divided on a boycott call but most say it could be justified in the most extreme cases, say, racial discrimination and grave war crimes. “The American treatment of the people of the world is far worse than China’s in Tibet,” says Gautam Navlakha of the People’s Union for Democratic Rights. “Along with the UK, they’ve committed war crimes in Iraq, in Afghanistan. They’re the aggressors, and if they’re still engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan at the time of the London Olympics, there definitely would be a case for a boycott.”

India had better be warned, Navlakha says, for if people here insist on a call to boycott the Beijing Olympics, then they can’t possibly insulate the Commonwealth Games from similar action. “India’s record in Kashmir is far worse than China’s in Tibet in terms of violence against people,” he argues, “though the Tibetans do have valid reasons to protest, especially over fears of losing their cultural heritage.” Adds Pushkar Raj of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties, “India is the homeland of the Tibetans too, and they have the right to protest. But even here, as in the cases of Gujarat and anti-Sikh riots, or on the issue of the people displaced by ‘progress’, the government doesn’t take kindly to protests.”

Navlakha, though, feels a boycott of an international sporting event defeats the noble purpose underlying it. “Neighbours who don’t even look at each other, who would like to think the worst of each other, share the arena in a fair, peaceful fight. There clearly is a political message.”

But such has been our history, it’s nearly impossible to insulate sports from politics. Human rights issues, ideological hostilities, hostilities between nations, they have all marred the purity of the Olympic ideals.The mingling of sports and politics began with the Berlin Olympics in 1936, when a call for boycott to protest against Hitler’s anti-Semitic policies was not heeded, and continued till the early ’80s (see Olympics: A Turbulent History and Mike Marqusee’s column). It was during that decade that the boycott policy was completely discredited by the tit-for-tat pull-outs by the USSR and the US in 1980 and 1984.

But the Olympics have always remained in the crosshairs of civil rights activists. One reason is that Olympian ideals speak in lofty terms of the human condition, and in so many words too. One ideal says “the goal of Olympism is to place sport at the service of the harmonious development of man, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity.” China, for one, had earlier been enthusiastic in espousing these ideals. Liu Jingmin, vice-president of the Beijing Olympics Games bid committee, had even said in April 2001, “By allowing Beijing to host the games, you will help the development of human rights.” Two months later, Beijing mayor Liu Qi said, “The games will help promote all economic and social projects and will also benefit further development of our human rights causes.” But that was then.

It isn’t clear whether international uproar produces results. Amnesty has noted a reduction in the number of executions in China though. But Petr Kutilek of Olympic Watch—which was established to monitor the human rights situation in China in the run-up to the games—says this can’t be verified as the number of executions remains a “state secret”. Critics also say that perhaps there’s been a temporary, artificial lull to allay international fears, that only the future will tell how successful the ongoing campaign has been.

Alarmingly, human rights campaigns stoke chauvinism and invite retaliation. The degradation of the torch worldwide—it had to be snuffed out more than once to protect it from protesters—even provoked angry Chinese students to mobilise “150 strong and energetic runners” to defend it in Australia, raising the spectre of violence. Attempts to disrupt the torch run have united the Chinese against what they perceive as their humiliation by the West (see story from Beijing).

“It has bred chauvinism and extreme nationalism,” says Navlakha. “The campaign for Tibet has lost those Chinese who were beginning to think there was something wrong. China is not a country that world powers can influence by force.” There are also fears that when the Olympics are over and done with, all the people lending their voice now will go home, forget about Tibet. A case of yet another protest going out of vogue.

Most sportspersons, the greatest losers in the event of a boycott, bleat without pause that sports and politics do not, should not, mix. Perhaps it’s because only they experience sports in its absolute purity. Perhaps it’s because a boycott dashes years of effort to win medals or at least participate in the Olympics. Former badminton champion Prakash Padukone told Outlook, “Does anyone consider how unfair it is on the sportsperson? The Olympics comes once in four years, and if there’s a boycott of Beijing, so many careers and dreams could end here.” Yet, Padukone does agrees that those sportspersons wishing to express their views should be allowed to do so.”You can have you views, you can express them in your way, there are other fora for that,” he says.

Padukone touches a chord here with Union sports minister M.S. Gill. “I’ve been watching and talking with some of these athletes for over two years,” he says. “They’ve been preparing for the Olympics all their lives. They believe it’s their ticket to glory, as these cricketers have it. My view is clear—if the games are on, India must be a participant. The focus must not be shifted from sports.”

Historian and writer Mukul Kesavan, however, feels that won’t happen anytime soon. “There’s no question that sportspersons get hurt. But the basic truth is that sports is less important than larger political issues. When a choice is to be made over political injustice, it’s reasonable for people to say there should be no symbolic or recreational events with countries that are monsters.”

But the ‘monster’ perception can be quite subjective. Today it’s China. In 2010, Delhi’s chattering classes, now busy expressing their horror over the plight of Tibetans, are likely to find, to their shock, India painted the new monster. Do Indians have the resolve to question their own state—and themselves?

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By Rohit Mahajan In Delhi And Ashish Kumar Sen In Washington