Olympic gag order

When Beijing was bidding to host the 2008 Summer Olympics, part of its pitch was that the games would help promote human rights in China, and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) bought it.

But with the Aug. 8 opening ceremonies less than three months away, it looks as if the reverse is the case — that China’s repressive norms are affecting the rest of the world.

Consider a letter the IOC recently sent to individual countries’ Olympic committees, clarifying its policy on political expression — even nonverbal expression — by athletes anywhere within Olympic venues.

Rule 51.3 of the Olympic charter, the letter noted, provides that “no kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda is permitted in any Olympic sites, venues or other areas.”

And, according to the letter, that ban applies very broadly indeed, encompassing “conduct of participants at all sites, areas and venues,” which includes “all actions, reactions, attitudes or manifestations of any kind by a person or group of persons, including but not limited to their look, external appearance, clothing, gestures, and written or oral statements.”

The IOC’s list of thought crimes discourages campaigns such as the Color Orange, which is urging athletes to wear orange as a protest of Chinese repression. It could even be construed to permit the political scrutiny of hand signals and “attitudes.”

Cowardly as it is, this Orwellian edict is depressingly consistent with previous British and New Zealander gag orders — from which those Olympic committees later retreated under pressure. The United States must stick to its position that athletes, no less than other citizens, are free to express themselves peacefully in Beijing or anywhere else.

The IOC claims that it is merely upholding the nonpolitical tradition of the Olympics. To be sure, not every international gathering has to be a summit.

There is a role for meetings devoted to goals such as the one declared in the Olympic Charter: “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.”

But even that gauzy objective is, actually, political — it takes negotiation to establish peace, and it takes justice, freedom and human rights to secure human dignity.

No worthy public goal can be pursued without a measure of controversy, debate and, yes, conflict. Let the struggles among and within nations be peaceful. But don’t pretend they don’t exist — much less try to stamp them out for the sake of a commercialized extravaganza.

In helping China do just that, the Olympic “movement” risks sacrificing values far more important than athletic competition.

The Washington Post