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Dissident warns against Beijing bid

A Chinese man and the Chinese Olympic logo is reflected on the glass doors of a shopping center in Beijing yesterday. PHOTO: AP

China's best-known exiled dissident, Wei Jingsheng (魏京生), on Wednesday urged the International Olympic Committee (IOC) not to award the 2008 Summer Olympics to Beijing when it meets later this week.

IOC delegates are due to make their decision in Moscow later today and the Chinese capital is the favorite to win against the other main bidders, Paris and Toronto, despite continued concerns over China's human rights record. The other cities going for the games are Osaka and Istanbul.

"The human rights situation at present is getting worse," Wei said through an interpreter after a meeting of the Asia Democracy Forum at the European Parliament.

"I hope that, before taking a decision, the members of the international committee will think carefully," Wei added.

Wei, imprisoned from 1979 to 1997 for advocating multi-party democracy, rejected suggestions made by some Western officials that holding the Games in Beijing would encourage greater openness in China.

"This is not a new point of view. During the 1930s people thought the Nazis would become nicer if they organized the Olympics, likewise the Soviets in 1980 ... but historical reality shows quite the opposite," he said.

Germany's Nazi regime hosted the Olympics in 1936 and the Soviet Union staged the games in 1980, one year after launching its invasion of Afghanistan.

"The situation for people in China is getting worse and worse. Social discontent is rising. ... Nobody can predict what is going to happen in China," said Wei.

He said China's bureaucracy would benefit most from holding the Olympics, with large sums of money changing hands and providing ample scope for corruption, while ordinary people would bear the brunt of the costs involved.

Wei was among 20 dissidents freed from jail for several months in 1993 when China was bidding for the 2000 Olympics, which were eventually won by Sydney. He was finally sent into exile in 1997.

An electrician by training, Wei, 51, has been nominated several times for the Nobel Peace Prize and won the European Parliament's Sakharov Prize in 1996 for his human rights work.

Wei leads the Overseas China Democracy Coalition in Washington.

The Asia Democracy Forum brings together human rights and pro-democracy activists from a number of Asian nations including China, Vietnam, Laos and Myanmar.

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