The head of marketing for the Beijing Olympics defended China's stance on Darfur and appealed to activists yesterday not to pressure sponsors to pull out of the Games.
"If you respect the truth, you will see that China has been doing a lot toward the resolution of the Darfur issue," said Yuan Bin, director of the Beijing Olympics marketing department. "As for groups pressuring sponsors about the Beijing Olympic Games, I want to say the Olympics should be kept nonpolitical."
Yuan defended the Games as "a celebration that contributes to world peace."
China has faced increasing pressure to do more to urge the government in Sudan -- where China is a major buyer of oil -- to end the violence in Darfur. More than 200,000 people have died in the Sudanese province in a conflict between rebels and militias backed by government forces.
Some of that pressure has spread to sponsors of the Games, which run from Aug. 8 to Aug. 24, with activists pushing the sponsors to reveal what they are doing to pressure Beijing to act more forcefully with the Sudan government.
The spotlight on the issue hit China again last week when director Steven Spielberg accused Beijing of not doing enough to bring an end to the suffering. Spielberg resigned as an artistic adviser to the opening and closing ceremonies of this summer's Beijing Olympics, saying his conscience would not allow him to continue working with the event.
China has consistently said the Olympics is a sporting event and should not be linked to politics.
Still, China has made significant changes to its policies in Sudan within the last year, appointing longtime diplomat Liu Guijin (劉貴今) as a special envoy to the region and sending 140 engineers to help prepare for the arrival of African Union and UN peacekeepers.
The efforts have earned kudos from the US.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier