Preparing for the Olympics: Explosions of Activism

For background on the developments of the Olympic protests, click here.

On April 8th, a representative of the International Olympic Committee said Olympic torch relays should be confined to the host country in the future. The scope of campaigns using the Olympics to shame China and raise awareness on the chronic, Chinese human rights violations in Tibet have reached unprecedented levels. Protests and demonstrations have sprung up virtually all over the world to follow the Olympic torch, demanding "a free Tibet." Even in the United States, officials had to fake protesters in San Francisco by changing the torch's route at the last minute to avoid violent clashes.

These large-scale protests have also had unintended consequences to strongly anger the pro-China crowd. In particular, images of a Chinese wheelchair-bound Olympic torch bearer fighting through violent demonstrations in Paris strongly affected Chinese communities. This incident spurred a series of ongoing, counter-protests in China against France and the western media. For a number of days, protests have been ongoing in numerous Chinese cities. Demonstrations have been targeting institutions such as CNN and Carrefour, one of France's largest supermarket chains. Some stories that have received attention amidst the chaos include the death of an American volunteer teacher in an anti-Carrefour protest in the Hunan province; and a Chinese student studying in the US becoming the victim of horrible threats, as she attempts to mediate between pro-China and pro-Tibet activists at Duke University. These incidents demonstrate the breadth to which these campaigns have extended...and the Olympics haven't even started yet.

Tibet activists are not the only ones who have been using the Olympics as a means to pressure China. Darfur activists, organized under the Dream for Darfur campaign, have been emulating torch relays around the world to venues such as Darfur, Rwanda, Bosnia, Armenia, Cambodia, and Germany, spreading the slogan: "the Genocide Olympics." The campaign has been striving to highlight how China's massive investments in the oil and energy sectors in Sudan have been financing the ongoing genocide in Darfur.

One major inference to draw from the massive scale of these incidents is that China and other states who have a record of human rights violations must take great care in promoting any sort of major, international programming they plan to host. Imagine if Sudan, Burma, or Zimbabwe were to host the next World Cup or some sort of an international exposition. Human rights activism is not to be taken lightly anymore. Although Carrefour claims to not be substantially affected by the protests economically, this precedent still gives companies ample reason to strategically avoid sponsoring events held by states with poor human rights records. The willingness of companies to make these conscious choices can be found within the success of the Sudan divestment movement, which has already gotten 24 states, 59 universities, and 19 cities to divest from companies that have investments in Sudan in less than 2 years. The movement has furthermore initiated international campaigns in 18 other countries.