Video
The short video above was filmed at The Battle for China at Norton Rose LLP. It covers a key debate which was posed as follows:
"Western democracies should take every opportunity, including the Beijing Olympics, to pressurise China to improve its human rights record."
The opposing speakers for this debate were:
- Brendan O'Neill: Editor of spiked. (More info here)
- Minky Worden: Media Director of Human Rights Watch and the editor of China's Great Leap: The Beijing Games and Olympian Human Rights Challenges, published by Seven Stories
Background to this debate
In the run-up to the Olympic Games in Beijing, many critics called for a boycott of some kind to show revulsion at China's support for the Sudanese regime, its disregard for human rights, and its treatment of Tibet. Film director Steven Spielberg pulled out of his role as artistic adviser to Beijing 2008 over China's 'unspeakable crimes' in Darfur. Actors George Clooney and Mia Farrow joined the likes of former UK sports minister Kate Hoey MP and NGO 'Reporters sans Frontiers', in slating China for allegedly funding 'Khartoum's genocide' and oppressing Tibetans. There was even a growing international campaign to brand these 'The Genocide Olympics', a slogan coined by Farrow in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece written with her 19-year-old son Ronan last year.
But what about the other side of the argument? An opinion piece in the People's Daily in January angrily fought back against the politicisation of the Games, arguing that China should not be cowed by Hollywood stars: 'If at each subsequent Olympics people stand up and use politics to maliciously attack the host nation, and use ideology to draw up boycotts, where does that leave the Olympic spirit?'. Other critics argued that the West had no right to lecture China on human rights anyway. Were calls for a boycott based on political principle, or hypocritical moral posturing? Should the Olympics have been used to 'bash' China or were they an opportunity to put the regime under international pressure to reform?