The Loneliness of the Human Rights Defender at the Moment of the Penalty

The first time one of my articles was spiked was in 1978 and it was about football. I was freelancing for a small leftwing daily in Brussels and they had asked me to draft an editorial on the World Cup in Argentina. Knowing my bad reputation as a campaigning journalist against Latin American military thugs, they felt they could trust my judgment.

After a few days of researching the story, of talking to members of the Argentine exile community I came to the conclusion that the paper should not appeal for a boycott of the World Cup, that it should instead use the invasion of Argentina by thousands of journalists and delegates and soccer fans to expose the military regimes dirty war, to give breathing space to the democratic opposition, to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable. The paper refused to go along with my argument and printed another editorial in favour of a boycott.

In fact I had not done my journalistic job properly. I had not interviewed national soccer federations, I had not talked to the players, I had not investigated the Argentine public relations machine. If I had done my homework I would have understood that my theory was a non-starter.

Indeed, courage on the soccer field is often inversely proportional to courage in the political and human rights field. The so-called sports virtues of fairness, rules and respect for the other are not supposed to apply outside of the field. There were no fairness, no rules and no respect when Argentine torturers were tackling their victims. In my idealistic vision of sports heroes I had thought that soccer champions, granted full immunity because of their status, would stand up and ask: Donde estan? Where are the disappeared? I also had thought that Argentina would lose the game and that defeat would deliver a terrible blow to the macho military regime.

I was wrong on both counts and Argentina had to wait for another 4 years and suffer another rout in the Falklands/Malvinas war before the gorillas fell off the trees.

No escape
When I was a special projects director with the Brussels daily Le Soir, assigning teams and suggesting stories for the Los Angeles Olympics or the Mexico World Cup most of my friends at the sports desk were always sweating nervously and hinting that I was mixing water with olive oil, sports and politics. Deep in their heart theyd rather have thought that I was mixing water with vinegar. It was their turn to commit a journalistic sin. Journalisms duty indeed is to reflect the world as it is and not as we like to see it, to give the full picture, to keep a critical and healthy distance away from charmers, schmoozers and bullies.

If journalists refuse to see that politics mixes with sports they should change jobs, and why not, become pom pom girls or FIFA stenographers. Politics has always been the fellow traveller of sports, and especially of Olympic sports. From the 1936 Berlin Games, with its nazi celebrations, to the Munich games with terrorist attacks against Israeli athletes, from the Mexico Games and its massacre at Tlatelolco and the raised fists of Black Power, to the Moscow and Los Angeles Games sucked into big power politics and the Cold War, sports and politics have always danced an unpredictable and adversary tango. If editorial page editors can safely debate the pros and cons of mixing politics with sports, reporters have no option but prepare themselves for this intrusion of politics and human rights into their field.

Beijing: no exception
The 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing is of course no exception and China is not a country that leaves anyone indifferent. It is a great country, a huge country that plays a leading role on the international scene. It is also a country with a one-party regime which has a very bad human rights record. This is where politics, like Manuel Puigs spider woman, again kisses sports.

In 1992, the human rights situation was an issue when Beijing ran for the 2000 Games and Human Rights Watch opposed Chinas bid. It became also an issue in 2001 when China competed with Paris, Istanbul, Toronto and Osaka for the 2008 Games. This time HRW again insisted that the human rights record of a country should be taken into serious consideration by the IOC in selecting the site. We asked the IOC to seek written assurances from Beijing on a few key issues, that journalists would have unrestricted access, that there would no one arrested or otherwise punished for peacefully protesting and that suspected dissidents would not be rounded up in advance of the Games. We insisted that not getting these commitments should be a factor against the selection.

In vain. When China was selected I felt like the lonely goalkeeper at the moment of the penalty. HRW decided however, contrary to other human rights organizations like Reporters sans frontiers and after an intense internal discussion, not to join the campaign for the boycott of Beijing 2008. Why? Why given the poor human rights situation did we refrain from campaigning for a boycott?

Because, to start with, HRW is not convinced that heavy-handed sanctions are necessarily effective. Although we recognize the validity of the pro-sanctions argument against the South African apartheid regime we believe that too often sanctions act like cluster bombs with their indiscriminate collateral damage, hitting the wrong people in the open field when the real guys are safely hidden in their bunkers. That is why we also oppose embargoes against Cuba or Iraq.

Secondly we listened to our friends in the Chinese human rights movement and they were telling us that a no to Beijing would be met with a toughening of the regime and would put the democrats under pressure since they would be accused of being traitors and anti-Chinese.

Strategically we also thought that the preparations for the Olympic Games would give us several years that could be used to highlight the human rights situation in China and help improve it.

The human rights challenge
We do not underestimate the capacity of the regime to use the Games to find a new national and international legitimacy and to take tough measures to ensure that the Games will not be disturbed. Our challenge now is to determine how we could use Chinas eagerness to get a positive international image from the Games as a lever to press for specific human rights improvement between now and 2008.

The kinds of steps we have urged the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights and UN General Secretary Kofi Annan to recommend in their interactions with Beijing could provide a framework for a pre-2008 human rights agenda, all of them specific, verifiable measures China could implement well before 2008 such as

1) Ratifying the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which China signed in 1998.

2) Allowing visits by UN Special Rapporteurs and working groups (on religious freedom, torture and ill-treatment, etc.) and actually implementing their key recommendations.

3) Opening up Xinjiang and Tibet to UN and private human rights monitors and international trial observers.

4) Removing reservations to the International Covenant on Social and Economic Rights on labour rights, lifting restrictions on independent trade unions and amending its labour laws to bring them into conformity with ILO free association standards.

5) Setting up and implementing a process to repeal administrative punishment such as re-education through labour.

6) Allowing greater freedom of expression to HIV/AIDS activists and adopting measures to protect the rights of persons living with HIV/AIDS and those at high risk of infection.

At some point before the Games there must be an assessment by the IOC, with input from the UN High Commissioner and independent monitors to determine whether China has made significant human rights progress, as many predicted would occur when Beijing was awarded the Games.

The journalistic challenge
This is the time now to escape from the strategic boardroom and to go back to the newsroom. Human rights will be a constant issue before and during the Beijing Olympics. It will stick to the coverage like a chewing gum under a school bank.
So what will journalists be confronted with? What should they be looking and prepare themselves for? Here is my tip sheet:

-In an era when big companies like talking about corporate social responsibility, check with the sponsors on how they can avoid being part of a human rights abusive system. In a letter to foreign companies bidding on construction of Olympic facilities, for instance, HRW insisted that they should adopt a code of conduct for the treatment of their workers, that those losing property or housing be fairly compensated and that migrants living in and around Beijing being displaced for the Olympics be fairly treated and not abused.

The same scrutiny should be applied to companies involved in special security systems, including surveillance and other equipment. Some of the technology could probably be recycled and used against dissidents. Check what kinds of safeguards can be built to limit opportunities for abuse.

Internet companies should be urged to take a pro active role and press for the lifting of the various regulations and controls now in place on web contact and access.

Press freedom is a barometer of other freedoms and international journalists should closely monitor the situation of press freedom in China since it will have an impact on their own capacity to report. Now, as described in HRW world report 2003, the situation is rather grim. China blocked major Internet search engines, closed publications, harassed foreign and domestic journalists, tightened controls on satellite transmission, and hampered the work of academics and activists.

Just prior to the IOCs decision to award China the Games, Wang Wei, secretary-general of the Official Beijing Committee, had said: we will give the media complete freedom to report when they come to China. Journalists should test this promise. They should check with the IOC on how they intend to live up to their rhetoric and make sure that China honours its pledge to allow all foreign journalists complete freedom to report. They should make sure that the international media have unrestricted access and there will be no discrimination against journalists or participants based on their political or religious views and country of origin. They should get guarantees that there would be no retaliation against Chinese citizens interviewed by the press.

Let us never forget, unlike the famous Wonder batteries, press freedom only runs out if you do not use it!