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Editorial: A sorry excuse for a celebration

So the decision is made and the stamps are on sale. Those who want reminding what a travesty the International Olympic Committee's award of the 2008 summer Games to Beijing is should take a look at the Olympic Charter. How its high flown ideals mesh with the ugly realities of China only someone with the infinitely flexible morality of Juan Antonio Samaranch could understand. Perhaps the man, who has been called "the world's most corrupt official," could explain how the IOC can equate the "respect for universal fundamental ethical principles" the charter talks of with China's behavior. That such considerations don't carry much weight with the IOC is hardly surprising. After all, in 1993 Beijing lost its bid for the 2000 Games by a mere two votes -- this only four years after it had been crushing its countrymen with tanks in the streets of the prospective host city.

So much for the relentless persecution of Christians and the Falun Gong -- whose shocking challenge to the system, remember, is to do tai-chi exercises -- the genocide of the Tibetans, the current flood of executions -- given the lack of due process in China little more than judicial murder -- to keep up the booming organ transplant trade, the imprisonment of hun-dreds of thousands in the Chinese gulag -- the vast majority without trial -- for "reeducation through labor" because the Public Security Bureau thinks they need it, the government's enthusiasm for selling other rogue nations components and know-how for building weapons of mass destruction; the list of transgressions of those "universal fundamental ethical principles" just goes on and on.

The simple, painful fact is that modern China mixes medieval cruelty with Orwellian social control in a way that provides a unique affront to exactly those principles regarding "the establishment of a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity" the Olympic movement is supposed to cherish.

China sees being awarded the Games as a recognition of its international respectability. It will now indulge in an orgy of nationalist bombast which will get louder as the country's very real economic and social problems get worse. The patriotic music will have to be cranked up to drown out the groans -- and the screams. Some supporters of the Beijing bid have argued that being awarded the Games would encourage China to be nicer to its citizens. Such a fallacious argument holds water only if you think that Canada should have abolished democracy, freedom of speech and worship, started persecuting its minorities and re-introduced the death penalty to boost Toronto's chances.

Nevertheless, now that the bid is a semi-done deal -- the IOC could, but almost certainly won't, change its mind -- the award of the Games will focus the attention not just of the international human-rights lobby but also the media as never before on the terrible situation in China. While the West might have been shocked by the events of 1989, the true awfulness of Chinese society on a day-to-day basis is still little understood.

It is a contradiction worthy of Milan Kundera that in the contemporary moral environment, where only economic growth is thought to matter, China's carefully massaged 8 percent annual growth statistics -- yes, there are fools who really believe this -- carries international weight, whereas the 120 tonnes of corpses produced by the "Strike Hard" campaign since April is as light as a feather. If the IOC's decision, wrong as it was, results in even a partial reversal of these perverted values then something positive might result.

China has been awarded the Games though it clearly doesn't deserve them. Can it turn itself into a more worthy host? If not then the prospect of a boycott has to be a serious option. In the meantime -- Kafka anyone?
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