New Zealand groups are encouraging athletes to speak out about the continuing human rights violations in China while at the Beijing Olympics in August.
Amnesty International have information packs they are sending out to Olympic athletes and acting campaign’s manager Margaret Taylor has met with the New Zealand Olympic Committee (NZOC) Secretary General to discuss their concerns.
Ms Taylor said the recent meeting with NZOC’s Barry Maister was a chance to hand over the athlete’s kit.
“We had a short meeting but it wasn’t substantive enough. We‘ll have another meeting and we’ll continue to engage with all parties in the Olympics,” she said.
Amnesty International reports a worsening state of human rights since China was awarded the Olympic Games in 2001.
Olympic athletes from other countries are speaking out, and Ms Taylor welcomes New Zealand athletes to do the same.
“We certainly know that Mark Todd spoke out about his willingness to speak out about the Tibetan protests. That’s really positive, and we would encourage him to speak out, and also other athletes to follow.”
“And at the very least being made aware of the human rights background to which they might be entering into, when they attend the Olympics,” she said.
Amnesty also has a comprehensive kit to provide media who are travelling to Beijing.
The Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (CIPFG) have launched a global ‘Millions of Signatures’ petition before the Olympics and New Zealand President Carole Curtis is urging athletes and spectators alike to speak out.
“Let’s not separate out sport and politics, because sport is political. People go in there marching, waving their flags, so it’s nonsense to say it’s not political.
“If you are willing to go to a country where gross, inhumane practices occur, don’t pretend it is something different than what it is,” Ms Curtis said. She said the CIPFG continues to investigate the state-sanctioned organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners.
“And it’s something that really the world has conveniently chosen politically to ignore.
“But if you go to the games, you can still speak out and spread the concern that something like this is happening... where people are celebrating the wonders of human achievement, and at the same breath, in the same place, there’s this gross cruelty. And it doesn’t gel well with the whole aims of what the Olympic Games are supposed to be about.”
Green Party MP Keith Locke said it was also important that politicians around the word put pressure on the Chinese regime before the Olympics.
“Because if we don’t, we don’t take advantage of this opportunity then after the Olympic games it'll all go back to the very worst situation again.”
He said there is a link between the 1936 Berlin Olympics and the 2008 Beijing games.
“Clearly the Chinese government is involved in a big PR campaign leading up to the Olympic games. The Chinese government, a bit like Hitler’s government, is trying to use the Olympics as a PR effort and sidestepping, or covering over, queries about human rights. But, I think it’s up to the international community to say ‘No, we will not accept any soft-soaping of human rights, we will expose these, what’s going on in China today, and the lack of any genuine human rights’.”
Wellington woman, Renee Corlett, also sees a link between the 1936 and the 2008 Olympics. Ms Corlett does a hunger strike every Thursday at Victoria University to raise awareness of the human rights violations in China, particularly the persecution of Falun Gong.
“It’s important to me because of my family history, my descendants came out of the Holocaust, and I see the same kind of things happening then, happening now.”
She said, like Nazi Germany, China is trying to show their regime as something other than it is.
“It’s being used in a way to distract the world from the actual serious human rights issues that are going on there.”
One hundred and forty five Jewish leaders in the USA have called for Jewish athletes to boycott the Olympics.
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