The Olympics, as we Chicagoans understand well, are a once in a lifetime opportunity for a place to put its best foot forward. If granted the chance to host the 2016 Summer Games, we look forward to introducing the world to our beautiful lakefront, our world-class museums and, of course, our Midwestern hospitality. But with that opportunity comes a responsibility to make sure our house (not to mention our mass transit system) is in order.
That’s a lesson that China is learning in dramatic fashion. Facing protests in Tibet — steadily increasing in scope and intensity since last Monday — the Chinese government has cracked down hard. Dozens of people — precise counts vary — are dead. And authorities have said that those rioters who didn’t turn themselves in would “be punished severely according to law.”
A brief primer: The Chinese government rules Tibet — and claims that Tibet is an integral part of China. But since 1959, the Dalai Lama, living in Dharamsala, India, has led a Tibetan government in exile. The current demonstrations, being led by Buddhist monks, are the largest China has faced from Tibet in two decades.
During its nearly six decades of rule over Tibet, China has done its best to suffocate Tibetan language and culture. Thousands of monasteries have been destroyed. Tens of thousands of Tibetans have been killed. Religious freedom is non-existent. And displaying the Dalai Lama’s photo is verboten. The protesting Tibetans want greater autonomy and an end to Beijing’s iron rule.
For China, these protests, coming just months before the world is set to descend on Beijing for the Summer Olympics, are beyond inconvenient. They shine a spotlight on China’s troubling human rights record — and re-insert the disputed status of Tibet into the international conversation.
Of course, that’s what the Tibetans want. When better to draw attention to your cause, and force the government’s hand, than in the months before the Olympics? Pro-democracy demonstrators used that strategy to perfection in South Korea when, a year before the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, they forced the collapse of an authoritarian regime, and elections. Democracy has since become a habit in South Korea, with free and fair elections held every five years.
Tibetan protesters aren’t just masters of timing. They also know that the best way to embarrass Beijing is to highlight how the new, more open China hosting the Olympics is the same old China that brutally suppressed dissent at Tiananmen Square in 1989.
This time, though, China can’t simply flex its muscle and smother the uprisings. The longer the protests continue, the more closely the rest of the world will scrutinize China’s governance of Tibet. Exile communities are keeping the pressure on by holding demonstrations around the globe: in Chicago, New York, Switzerland, Nepal, Australia and New Delhi, to name some locales.
The Beijing government is frantic to contain the story. China has banned foreign journalists from traveling to Tibet, and tourists reportedly are being ordered out. But Radio Free Asia continues to report on the Chinese crackdown. Information, in the Internet age, respects no borders. And image is one thing China government can’t control.
So as Beijing prepares to use the Olympics to showcase what’s right with China, it should remember that the Games will also draw attention to what’s wrong.
