Norm on Beijing

Norm Geras has a characteristically thoughtful response to the issue of whether the Beijing Olympics should be boycotted.

Norm's basic objection is that Irish - or any - athletes should not be made "answerable" for China's human rights record. This is a stance that I agree with entirely, and, were the issue of a boycott to become one of punishing athletes - as Pat Hickey disingenuously implied - I would not have written the article. I would also go further and say that I don't think athletes should be unduly pressured (or 'shamed') into pulling out of something that they have been working hard for, for many years, simply to make a political point that they may not agree with (there are, no doubt, Kissingerian realists among our Olympians).

The point of advocating a boycott however - and of writing the piece - is my own hope that individual athletes would, in the light of his or her own conscience, decline to be part of something that would have such baleful political consequences for the world at large. China's Olympics will, without a doubt, legitimise a regime and a power that has yet to earn that legitimacy. Indeed, it has seemingly worked hard to disown any kind of international legitimacy, playing patron to a host of grisly states - Burma, Zimbabwe, North Korea, and Sudan - who are far beyond the pale of the international community. Ethnic slaughter, mass torture, concentration camps - these are the activities that Chinese influence underwrites. And this is without even mentioning the issue of freedom in China itself, or repression in Tibet, or habitual belligerence toward Taiwan, or the environmental meltdown that the Olympics is precipitating.

The idea is to make credible the idea of deciding to not to go to Beijing for political reasons - but that decision is for each individual athlete to make, just as it will be for every viewer to make when they decide what to watch on TV this coming August. To take away that choice is not what advocating a boycott is about, but to make the choice real, and to (hopefully) show that it has consequences, both good and bad.

If this wasn't readily apparent in the Times piece, its perhaps because I used the catch-all "Ireland" when I should have said "Irish athletes" - as in the closing paragraph that Norm cites. All that said, I think Norm did a far better job than Mr Hickey in articulating opposition to boycott calls.