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The Olympics’ Real Legacy: Greater Repression
From Geoffrey York’s fine piece in today’s Toronto Globe and Mail:
In the small Beijing suburb of Hongxialu, there’s a new force in town. The government has recruited a special unit of 288 residents, mostly middle-aged or elderly, to work as “security volunteers” in the lead-up to the Olympics.
Wearing red armbands with Olympic badges, the volunteers loiter near the entrance gates of their neighbourhood. They scrutinize every visitor and report to the police if they see anyone unfamiliar or suspicious.
The volunteers of Hongxialu are just one cog in a vast machinery of surveillance in Beijing these days. Across the city, a network of 400,000 informants and volunteers has been mobilized to keep an eye out in their communities. The old Maoist system of neighbourhood committees, which had largely fallen into irrelevance in the past decade, is being revived again as a tool of social control.
When the last gold medal has been awarded and the athletes have left, this network of informers – along with an estimated 300,000 surveillance cameras and a strengthened security apparatus – will remain as perhaps the biggest legacy of the historic Beijing Olympics….
So far, it seems clear that the Beijing Olympics have led to a deterioration of human rights and freedom in China. “It has reversed the clock,” says Nicholas Bequelin, a China researcher for Human Rights Watch. “Over all, the Games are having a negative impact on human rights. It has stunted the growth of civil society and civil organizations.”
Congratulations, International Olympic Committee. Boy, the idea that the Olympics would force the ChiComs to open things up has worked brilliantly, hasn’t it? Instead of Seoul 1988, what we’ve gotten is Berlin 1936 without the racial ideology: fascism with a smiley face.
More from York:
“This government is bent on recentralizing policy and authority generally, so this tightening will not be temporary,” said Russell Leigh Moses, a political analyst in Beijing.
“I think that we will look back upon these Games as representing not a move towards political reform or rethinking power but bolstering the confidence of officials that they can indeed micromanage events.”
Some of the new restrictions – including the tighter controls on visitors and foreigners – will not only remain in Beijing but will probably be extended to other cities, Mr. Moses said.
“For all too many officials, these Games are not about international co-operation but about Chinese power,” he said.
In place of the greater freedom you promised, the Chinese people are instead getting greater surveillance, greater repression, more centralization of control, and a return to long-discredited tactics once abandoned as an outdated remnant of Maoism.
People are going to have to wear gas masks in Beijing — not because of the pollution, but from the stench of your sycophancy and denial.
Hat tip: Beijing Wide Open
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