Beijing ready for Olympics of suspicion and silence
Rome (AsiaNews) - On July 8, there will be just one month to go before the Beijing Olympics. One year ago, the Chinese media were already saying that "Beijing is ready". President Hu Jintao repeated the claim just a few days ago, at a meeting of the Politburo. "We are basically ready for the Games", he stated. And he added that China "is confident of doing a good job during the Olympics and making it a high-level event so as to satisfy the international community, athletes of different countries and regions, and the Chinese people".
According to testimony obtained by AsiaNews, the Chinese people are not quite so satisfied. Of course, there are millions of Chinese who hoped that the Olympics would be a kind of trampoline to launch them toward wealth, well-being, greater dignity; others (and these are in the majority) see the games as a chance to present the New China, modern and powerful: no longer the Cinderella of Maoist sobriety, but a wealthy empress of the global economy. Still others have hoped that the slogan of the Games ("One World, One Dream") would also be applied to all of the freedoms enjoyed by the West, which are still denied in China: freedom of expression, of religion, of association, of democracy.
The games will be inaugurated under the lucky auspices of the number "8": August 8 of 2008, at 8:08 in the evening. In reality, China's "lucky" year has been a year of "disgrace" that has manifested the enormous "gaps" present in the country's dizzying development: in January and February, heavy snowfall blocked trains and communications for weeks, leaving entire regions without electricity and supplies; in March, demonstrations in Tibet unleashed Chinese repression, and even today the government is silent about the number of those killed and about the real situation in Tibet, which remains to a large extent isolated and under tight control. In April, the international journey of the Olympic torch saw contrast between China and global civil society, with mutual boycott threats, of the Games on the one hand and of the economy on the other. In May, the earthquake in Sichuan, although it brought many of the country's leaders close to the people struck by the disaster, also revealed the years of corruption and neglect in the construction of schools and public buildings, the destruction of which killed an entire generation of children. In June, environmental emergency broke out: Qingdao, the site for the Olympic regatta, was invaded by enormous masses of algae, due to pollution; many athletes have decided not to participate in the opening ceremony of the Games, simply to delay by a few days their exposure to Beijing's unbreathable air; Hebei, from which the capital gets its drinking water, is experiencing a difficult drought.
This entire "obstacle course", made up of natural calamities and institutional violence, is certainly not making international tourism easier. According to information from many travel agencies and airlines, the months of July and August are "empty" of flight reservations for China, and the optimistic predictions of 2 million foreign visitors have fallen to only 500,000.
To make matters worse, and discourage visitors even more, since last April Beijing has changed - precisely on account of the Olympics - the method for requesting visas, making this more bureaucratic and more difficult. No one, not even foreigners who have been working in China for years, has the right to visas for more than one month, or for multiple entries. Every request must be accompanied by an outline of the places the person intends to visit, a copy of the round-trip ticket, and hotel reservation details.
What should have been an event permitting Beijing to open itself to the world is becoming the exact opposite, with China becoming more closed off than ever before. The foreign ministry has defended the policy of visa restrictions, saying that this is necessary to keep foreign "hostile forces" away from the country's borders.
But the paranoia over security is also affecting the Chinese population. Thousands of soldiers have already been deployed in Beijing. To these are added 40,000 police officers, 27,500 reinforcements, 10,000 security guards, 300 anti-terrorism guards, and 15,000 national guard volunteers, in addition to the normal network of spies and informants. For days, anyone who has used the underground in the capital has had to pass through airport-style security, going through metal detectors and being prepared to open suitcases and backpacks. Even the passengers travelling by bus to the cities where the games are taking place are being checked in the waiting rooms, and before getting on the bus. The "anti-terrorism" plan is aimed above all at preventing attacks by Uyghur Muslims, Tibetan "terrorists", evangelical fanatics. But the upshot is that the entire population is under surveillance. It is forbidden to present petitions, speak with foreign journalists about the problems in China, publish news about democracy on the internet. More than 50 people - activists, human rights lawyers, and journalists - have been arrested and sentenced. Others have been "advised" to remain at home under "voluntary" house arrest. Even priests of the underground Church have been advised to "disappear" during this period, until after the Olympics.
The Olympic Games, publicised as a celebration of friendship and encounter among peoples, are becoming in the hands of Beijing the Games of suspicion and silence.
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