International Olympic Committee Sets Precedent, Reprimands Tibet Party Boss

By International Campaign for Tibet

In a rare departure, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) said that it "regrets that political statements were made during the closing ceremony of the torch relay in Tibet," referring to comments made by Communist Party chief in the Tibet Autonomous Region Zhang Qingli, a well-known hardliner who has a leading role in the current crackdown.

"We welcome a public statement by the IOC in response to a Chinese official using an Olympic stage to assert claim to Tibet and denounce the Dalai Lama. China accuses the Dalai Lama of attempting to sabotage the Olympics when, in fact, the Dalai Lama has consistently supported the Chinese people's aspirations for the 2008 Olympics. Ironically for the Chinese government, it is one of their own who gets the first IOC reprimand for mixing politics and sports," said John Ackerly, President of the International Campaign for Tibet.

In an email to ICT, the IOC said that it regrets that political statements were made during the closing ceremony of the Torch Relay in Tibet. Communications Director Giselle Davies said: "We have written to the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games Organising Committee (BOCOG) to remind them of the need to separate sport and politics and to ask for their support in making sure that such situations do not arise again." The executive president of BOCOG is Guo Jinlong, the Mayor of Beijing who himself served as Party Secretary of the TAR from 2000-2004.

Ms Davies did not answer questions posed by ICT as to whether the IOC would take possible further action in order to ensure that such comments were not made during the Olympics itself, such as seeking an apology, or requesting that Zhang Qingli not attend the ceremonies. The IOC letter to the Beijing Olympic Organising Committee (BOCOG) sets a precedent for how it will respond to China using Olympic venues for overtly political statements.

On the Olympic stage in Lhasa, on the official leg of the torch relay on Saturday (June 21), Zhang Qingli had said: "Tibet's sky will never change and the red flag with five stars will forever flutter high above it ... we will certainly be able to totally smash the splittist schemes of the Dalai Lama clique." He added: "In order to bring more glory to the Olympic spirit, we should firmly smash the plots to ruin the Beijing Olympic Games by the Dalai clique and hostile foreign forces inside and outside of the nation," he said. The transcript of Zhang's speech on the official website of the Tibet Information Office (http://info.tibet.cn) omitted the line about the Dalai Lama. Tight security was in place in Lhasa for the torch relay; Lhasa citizens were told not to leave their houses or look out of their windows, and there was a climate of fear throughout the city in the aftermath of protests and riots in March.

Zhang Qingli's comments were consistent with rhetoric throughout his career as Party Secretary of the TAR since March 2005. In an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel a year after his appointment, he said: "I have never understood why a person like the Dalai Lama was honored with [the Nobel Peace Prize]...We do not know how much longer he will live. We believe that good people live longer while bad people live shorter lives." (August 16, 2006). Zhang Qingli, who is 57, has assumed a leading role in the crackdown against the protests in recent months, enforcing an intensified implementation of 'patriotic education' in monasteries, nunneries and the lay society in the region which requires even schoolchildren to write lengthy denunciations of the Dalai Lama. His virulent rhetoric against the Tibetan religious leader has led to widespread resentment in Tibet and has provoked further unrest.

The International Campaign for Tibet is asking world leaders to keep the option of attending the opening ceremony on the table, as more information about the situation in Tibet becomes available.

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