I really shouldn’t overgeneralize like that. One Brit at The Guardian hears the talk, and is anxious that a bad precedent is being set – a precedent that could bite the U.K. when it hosts the Olympics four years from now. Here’s Peter Preston:
You can write much of the script for London 2012 already: the tube strikes, the cost over-runs, the security computers that won’t work and the Kazakh weightlifters lost in Heathrow Airport’s Terminal Five. Factor fat helpings of familiar chaos. But the real problem for the Olympic games we thought we wanted to host is beginning to emerge from the smog over Beijing. Boycotts, boycotts everywhere, and never a pause to think.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has given in already. She won’t be going to China this summer, like the Polish prime minister and Czech president.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy is wandering down the same lightly principled path. Expect more European political defections, plus threatening talk from the US would-be leaders in election year. Darfur began the chat and Tibet has turned it to hubbub; this year will be a time for tender consciences to stay away – and 2012 can’t fail to catch the same virus.
[…]
Cue London 2012. Cue all the other freedom warriors who have seen what attention protest can bring. Don’t think that the tiger won’t be pulled by its tail again. But surely we are different: Everyone loves us, don’t they? Not when Stratford provides such a splendid world stage. Not when mushy precedent is set. Prepare, alas, to be very disappointed.
I can see where he’s coming from. For causes ranging from Northern Ireland to Scottish independence to, heck, the Iraq War for all I know, professional protesters will see 2012 as their golden opportunity. And while Preston & myself would probably both agree there’s a time and a place for dissent, I think he completely misses the point with regards to Tibet. Because for Tibetans, there IS no time or place they’re permitted to protest. If they’re not to march now, then when?
Let’s be clear here. The Republican in Northern Ireland is free to argue for his cause with a letter to the editor. The Scot can agitate for his by starting a blog. The anti-war protester in London can receive a permit to march almost any time he wants one.
And the native of Tibet?
Well, he’s free, too, in a fashion. Free to shut his mouth, or be sent to a re-education camp somewhere. By presenting him with this stark choice in the past, the Chinese government made it more, not less likely that he would stand up now. Because at any other time, Beijing could have done whatever it wanted with its prisoners, confident in the knowledge that the world would quickly lose interest.
But now, the Olympics are but a few short months ahead. And the world is watching, and wondering. Nosy foreign reporters are asking if the accused are all right, and the impertinent fellows are even asking to be allowed to SEE these dastardly splittists.
What’s Beijing gonna do with the detainees now? Line ’em all up and have ’em all shot?
It’s interesting Preston should bring up the issue of precedent with respect to Olympic protests. He might be surprised to learn that protests have long been a part of the Games, even in ancient times…
[to be continued]