‘Genocide Games’
Apr 9th, 2007 by jim
A good summary article on the Genocide Games campaign..
excerpt:
‘Genocide Games’
In summer 2008, the world will turn its gaze to the Beijing Olympics. A growing number of activists want to make sure the shadow of Darfur, and China’s complicity, are what the world remembers.
Click-2-ListenBy Kevin Cullen
THE BOSTON GLOBE
Sunday, April 01, 2007
In February, sitting in his home office in Northampton, Mass., Eric Reeves pushed the send button on his computer, intending to spread an idea — a modest but potentially powerful idea.
Reeves, a professor of literature at Smith College who has become one of the world’s foremost experts on the humanitarian disaster in Darfur, has concluded that only China, as Sudan’s biggest economic and diplomatic supporter and a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, can stop the slaughter that President Bush has called genocide (as many as 400,000 people have been killed in the Darfur region of Sudan since 2003, and more than 3 million others may face a similar fate).
Yang Xinyue XINHUA
It took China three tries to land the Olympics, and some think the nation’s leaders are more likely now to be influenced by international pressure to stop the humanitarian disaster in Darfur. China buys two-thirds of Sudan’s crude oil exports, giving it considerable leverage – if China’s leaders choose to use it.
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And China, Reeves says, can only be pressured to act by appealing to its sense of national pride and honor — forcing Beijing to choose between its lucrative relationship with the Sudanese government and having its coveted games lumped in the collective consciousness with Nazi Germany’s hosting of the Berlin games in 1936.
A United Nations plan to send in an armed force to protect humanitarian workers and stop the killing was sidetracked last year when Sudan refused to let them in, and China abstained from the vote. Most foreign aid workers have withdrawn from the area for lack of protection.
Sudan has weathered American and European sanctions for more than a decade, largely because China, along with several countries in the Muslim world, has shown no compunction in investing in Sudan. Buoyed by its oil exports, 70 percent of which go to China, Sudan’s economy is humming along even as it is a pariah in the Western world.
Some human rights organizations, such as Reporters Without Borders, are calling for a boycott of the Summer Olympics in Beijing next year, while other activists, including former Beatle Paul McCartney, call for boycotting Chinese products. Reeves is pushing what he considers a more realistic campaign to “brand” the 2008 Games the “Genocide Olympics,” harnessing the energy of a frustrated, disheartened activist base.
“A boycott won’t work, and it would be deeply divisive anyway,” Reeves said. “It’s time to begin shaming China. China’s complicity in the Darfur genocide makes its Olympic slogan, ‘One world, one dream,’ ghastly in its irony. The U.S. government is not going to do anything. The European Union is not going to lead either. It’s time to take the effort private.”
Reeves is not alone in believing that only China has the influence over the Sudanese government to persuade it to accept a peacekeeping force and stop the killing. Karen Hirschfeld, the Sudan coordinator for Physicians for Human Rights, points out that while more than two-thirds of Sudan’s crude exports go to China, that makes up only 10 percent of China’s oil imports. In other words, Sudan needs China more than the other way around.
“China does have this leverage,” she said.
Robert Ross, a professor at Boston College who specializes in Chinese foreign policy, thinks a shaming campaign can have an impact. He doesn’t accept the familiar argument that agitation makes China dig in its heels.
“That’s old thinking,” he said. “The Chinese know there will be thousands of journalists in China for the Olympics, and they’ll be writing stories about a lot of things other than the Olympics.”
“The Chinese are working overtime to manage the Olympics,” Ross said, “and managing Darfur is going to be part of it.”