EDITORIAL – Boycotting Beijing

China’s human rights violations and suppression of protests in Tibet spurred demonstrations in… China’s human rights violations and suppression of protests in Tibet spurred demonstrations in Paris during a stretch of the Olympic torch relay yesterday, with angry protesters scaling the Eiffel Tower, grabbing for the flame and attempting to foil the more than 3,000 police officers deployed in the city to help maintain the event, according to the Associated Press. San Francisco, where the torch is expected to arrive Wednesday, also had its share of demonstrations when protesters scaled the Golden Gate Bridge and tied the Tibetan flag and two banners to its cables.

This week’s strife is only the continuation of what has become an intense controversy of foreign participation in the 2008 Beijing summer Olympics. Many are calling on the United States and other countries to boycott.

Some European leaders, including the Czech president and the Polish prime minister, have already pledged to boycott the opening ceremony of the Games in light of China’s suppression of protests in Tibet, according to the BBC. Several athletes are also currently considering a boycott, some in protest of China’s politics, others voicing health concerns over China’s polluted atmosphere, which they believe could impede upon athletic performance.

But other leaders, including British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and President George W. Bush, who promises that his appearance at the Games will only be as a sports fan, have maintained pledges to attend the Games’ opening ceremonies. China’s human rights violations, violent clashes against Tibetan protesters and unquestioned trade relations with Sudan can no longer fall on the deaf ears of Bush.

Bush has said he will attend the Olympics as a sports fan but not to make any political statements. What Bush is ignoring is that the Games, particularly the opening ceremonies, which celebrate the culture of the host country, are inherently political. Governments around the world, including the United States, have used the Olympic Games as a symbol of both diplomacy and political strife for the last half century, most notably with the boycott of the Moscow Olympic Games in 1980 by 65 nations – including the United States – and the Soviet Union’s reciprocal boycott of the Los Angeles Olympic Games in 1984.

And while Bush has remained quiet on the subject, more vocal U.S. politicians like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Hillary Clinton have both called upon the president to boycott the Games’ opening ceremonies.

A Bush boycott of the Olympic opening ceremonies would be enough of a political statement to send China the message that we take issue with its treatment of Tibet, human rights violations and economic relations with Sudan without robbing our athletes of the opportunity to compete by boycotting the Games in full.

The U.S. political and economic relationship with China is currently a tenuous one: We disagree with some of its policies and trade relationships, but we depend crucially upon importing Chinese goods. But this does not and should not justify Bush’s current refusal to address China’s human rights violations and relations with Tibet, particularly when he has professed oh-so-many times the United States’ responsibility to spread freedom throughout the world.