HEAD TO HEAD: Seán Colemanargues that Ireland's participation will help to legitimise a regimes that abuses human rights. Pat Hickeysays the history of Olympic boycotts shows they do not work.
YES - SEÁN COLEMAN:STEVEN SPIELBERG'S decision to withdraw as artistic adviser to the Beijing Olympics, in protest at China's complicity with the violence in Darfur, drew a predictable official response. "Linking the Darfur issue to the Olympic Games will not help to resolve this issue," said a Chinese government spokesman, "and is not in line with the Olympic spirit that separates sport from politics." Another film-maker connected to the games, Hong Kong's Andrew Lau Wai-keung, criticised Spielberg: "It's clear that the Olympics is all about sport, and nothing to do with politics".
This line - that sport should be separate from politics - will be much rehearsed ahead of the Olympics, as pressure mounts on China for its dismal human rights record. It is the main argument against calls for a boycott. It is one, however, that does not stand up. The billions that will be spent on the games are, primarily, an investment in China's political image: that of a rising world power.
It also bears pointing out that, when China was bidding to host the 2008 Olympics, much was made of how it would be a transformative political event. It was a central plank in its pitch to the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Liu Jingmin, vice-president of the Organising Committee, claimed that "by allowing Beijing to host the games, you will help the development of human rights". Last October, Liu insisted Olympic preparations had helped boost human rights causes in China. IOC president Jacques Rogge declared that the "Olympic Games will definitely have a positive, lasting effect on Chinese society". If anything, the opposite has occurred. According to Human Rights Watch, despite promises of a "pre-Olympic 'Beijing spring' of greater freedom", there has been a widespread "gagging of dissidents, a crackdown on activists, and attempts to block independent media coverage". Those calling for more respect for human rights have, en masse, been harassed, assaulted and arrested.
Much of this has been enabled by the Olympic build-up. The Chinese government has painted the Beijing games as not only a great honour, but as a victory for Chinese nationalism. Consequently, those who would bring the nation into disrepute in its hour of glory can be easily tarred as unpatriotic spoilers. A tightening of internal controls thus becomes "necessary" to avoid international embarrassment. Here, sport provides cover for "politics" of the worst kind.
When one considers China's activities further afield, the picture becomes grimmer. In Darfur, over 200,000 people have been killed, and two million people driven from their homes, by the Sudanese government's brutal counter-insurgency.
Outside of Khartoum, China bears greatest responsibility. It has almost single-handedly propped up the regime, pumping billions of dollars of oil revenue into an economy which, because it is massively indebted, would otherwise collapse. Most of this revenue is funnelled toward military expenditure: the heavy artillery and helicopter gunships that have been used against Darfuri villages. China has also been Khartoum's primary supplier of military hardware and weapons technology. In May 2007, Amnesty International cited China for illegally continuing to ship weapons to Sudan, in violation of UN resolutions.
China has also consistently afforded Sudan diplomatic cover at the United Nations, abstaining from - thus critically weakening - a host of resolutions designed to bring peace to Darfur. Resolution 1556 "demanded" that Sudan disarm and subdue vicious Janjaweed militias. China's abstention meant Khartoum could ignore it, secure in the knowledge that the international community lacked the strength, and the will, to back it up.
Beyond Sudan, Chinese largesse has been extended also to a catalogue of the world's worst human rights abusers. China enjoys warm relations with Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe, and has become its second-largest trading partner. It is the sole ally of North Korea, which is reckoned by many to be the world's most repressive state. The military junta in Burma has been kept afloat through Beijing's massive purchases of timber, which render western sanctions ineffectual, and the unimpeded influx of Chinese weaponry. Suffice to say, the main Burmese opposition group, the '88 Generation Students, has called for a boycott.
This summer's games will be a lavish affair, as befits an event announcing China's international pre-eminence. Yet by participating, Ireland will bestow upon the Chinese government an international legitimacy that it does not deserve. China's own human rights deficiencies have been matched by its uncritical patronage of the world's worst regimes. The Beijing Olympics risks becoming merely a propaganda coup, with sport employed as political pageantry, obscuring the more unsavoury realities of China's global power. Ireland should honour its stated commitment to human rights, and decline to be part of the spectacle.
Seán Coleman is Ireland campaign manager for the Sudan Divestment Taskforce
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NO - PAT HICKEY:CHANGE COMES through a dialogue of which sport can be a part. History is there to remind us of errors made in the past and hopefully to let us learn from them. Boycotting the Olympic Games is one of those lessons history has taught us - it does not work.
US president Jimmy Carter, enthusiastically supported by Margaret Thatcher, decided to launch a boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics as a result of the Soviet Union's entry into Afghanistan. Taoiseach Charles Haughey was forced, through extreme diplomatic pressure from London and Washington, to follow suit.
The taoiseach, who was deeply and personally embarrassed at having to do it, withdrew government funding from the Irish Olympic team and requested that the Irish team not participate in Moscow.
Lord Killanin, who was president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the pre-eminent Irishman in the world of sport said "no way".
The issue caused a huge uproar at the time. There was massive resentment at what was seen as "political blackmail" against a sovereign Irish government.
Individuals and groups rallied to financially support the Irish team including trade unions, GAA clubs and hundreds of small donors, North and South.
So the Olympic Council of Ireland sent a full team to the Moscow games, won two medals and Irish athletics entered a golden age through brilliant performances by Eamonn Coghlan and John Treacy. And nothing changed - the boycott did not work.
When the Soviet Union and its allies decided to return the favour in 1984 at the Los Angeles Olympic Games, nothing changed - the boycott did not work.
And Ireland sent a full team. Remember John Treacy's silver medal run? Ireland's Olympic team has followed, and will continue to follow, the Olympic Charter, which states that all national Olympic committees must be autonomous and at all times resist pressure of a political, religious or economic nature.
For Beijing, it now looks as if the boycott lesson has been learned. Not a single leading international statesman nor a single government is suggesting that the Beijing games should be boycotted. Even many of China's strongest critics, such as Amnesty International and credible NGOs, are opposed to a boycott.
The reason is simple - change comes about through dialogue, contact and the development of relationships.
An Olympic boycott closes doors, rather than opening them.
If it were not for the games in Beijing this year, the coverage given to the many protest groups would simply not see the light of
day. It is the very holding of the games in Beijing that is allowing people to have their views heard and discussed in the world's media.
Holding the games keeps the door to change open. When the IOC decided to give Seoul the 1988 games, Lord Killanin was convinced a major mistake had been made. South Korea was still technically at war with the north and he feared the 1988 games would be a disaster.
They weren't, and instead helped propel South Korea from a military dictatorship into a democracy.
The late Lord Killanin's IOC has changed a lot in recent times but one thing has not changed.
That is its view that the IOC is a sports organisation and that its influence lies solely in the sports area. It leaves issues such as human rights and political matters to the United Nations and other more appropriate organisations.
Nobody can say what changes will take place in China because of the Olympics. I believe there will be positive changes. Once that door is open, it can never be properly closed again. An open-door approach will benefit China, its citizens and its relationships with other countries long after the games conclude.
When people talk of Olympic boycotts the last people they consider are the athletes. For the vast majority of athletes taking part, there are no financial rewards.
Apart from a very select few who are highly paid professional athletes, the majority are simply there to take part in the biggest sport festival in the world and gain a suitcase full of memories.
Just to get to the Olympics as an athlete takes years and years of dedication and much sacrifice, not just by the athlete but often by their family and, be assured, Ireland will participate in Beijing with a squad full of the cream of young athletic talent from Ireland's 32 counties.
To exploit them for a hollow political gesture is a betrayal of the very rights that the protesters are proclaiming.
Pat Hickey is president of the Olympic Council of Ireland, president of the European Olympic Committees and Irish member of the International Olympic Committee