The 2008 Olympics are over. As axpected, the stadiums were completed in time and on the whole the arrangements were excellent. Whenever the Olympics are held in a totalitarian country, this adds a certain flavour to the games.
The older ones among you may remember that in Moscow (1980) Russians opened the huge doors of the stadium behind the Russian javelin throwers in an effort to improve the Russians' results.
The idea was that as the air was very hot and humid in the stadium, cooler air flowing in from behind the thrower helped the javelin hang in the air longer.
Before that, Hitler had put on his show in 1936. The ones that suffered the most from the 2008 Games were the two Americans who lost their lives. The hundreds of Chinese who had to abandon their homes because of the games aren't particularly happy either.
Some phenomena associated with the Beijing Olympics are slightly amusing. China enforces censorship and therefore certain Internet sites are not available for the Chinese. Some western companies have agreed to the Chinese censorship to be able to do business in China. A Google search for Tiananmen Square yields completely different results in China than in the free world, for example. China had promised to open the forbidden Internet sites to foreign journalists, yet these sites were not accessible during the first few days of the games. After the Chinese authorities realized that this policy would do China more harm than good, the denied sites were opened.
This is what Helsingin Sanomat writes about the dark side of the games:
"Before the games, the Chinese authorities announced that they were going to allow demonstrations in accordance with Chinese law. The authorities said that there was going to be "a demonstration area" in three Beijing parks and people can freely speak there. According to the authorities, 149 people applied for a demonstration permit. All applicants were denied a permit.
Many of those who applied have been forced to leave Beijing. When a civil rights activist called Ji Sizun went to a police station to inquire about his application, he was arrested and no one has heard of him since. 79-year-old Mrs Wu Dianyuan and her neighbour Wang Xuiying, 77, asked for permission to demonstrate against being evicted from their homes because of Olympic construction work. The authorities replied that they will be sent to a labour camp for a year.
Foreign journalists were harassed and Chinese activists were arrested during the games. A Christian called Hua Huaqi heard that George W Bush was going to visit a church in Beijing. Hua wanted to go there as well to tell Bush what kind of harassment he is subjected to constantly as leader of a local church. The security police arrested Hua and he is still missing.
A human rights activist and wife of a political prisoner Zeng Jinyan disappeared from her home. A close relative says that the security police have taken her to be kept in the city of Dalian far away from the thousands of foreign journalists. This can be considered an improvement. There was a time when Chinese citizens disappeared without anyone knowing their whereabouts."
CB