Europe muttering on Tibet: Olympic boycott?

As the situation in Tibet turns from bad to worse, the latest crackdown by Beijing on nationalist protesters in Lhasa and elsewhere has some wondering how the West should respond. Der Spiegel reports that some Europeans have begun dusting off the Jimmy Carter playbook. Suggestions for a humiliating boycott of the 2008 Olympics in China have come into the mainstream, at least as a last option.

First, though, the Washington Post reports on China’s escalation against the protests and their spread to neighboring provinces:

Vowing a harsh crackdown, Chinese police conducted house-to-house searches in central Lhasa Monday and rounded up hundreds of Tibetans suspected of participating in a deadly outburst of anti-Chinese violence, exile groups and residents reported.

The large-scale arrests and official promises of tough reprisals suggested the Chinese government has decided to move decisively to crush the protests despite calls for restraint from abroad and warnings that heavy-handed repression could taint next summer’s Olympic Games in Beijing.

The Tibetan regional governor, Champa Phuntsok, said detainees who show remorse and inform on others who were part of the week-long unrest would be rewarded with better treatment. But Buddhist monks and other Tibetans who participated in Friday’s torching of Chinese-owned shops and widespread attacks on Han Chinese businessmen would be “dealt with harshly,” he told a news conference in Beijing.

In a widely broadcast announcement, the government had given rioters until midnight Monday to turn themselves in, after which they were threatened with arrest. But Urgen Tenzin, executive director of the India-based Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy, said he was told by telephone that about 600 Tibetans had been arrested before nightfall by a police sweep that lasted most of the day.

That’s quite a deal offered by the Tibetan governor. Inform on your fellow Tibetans, and the Chinese authorities won’t mistreat you to the same extent as your former comrades. Actually, one has to also show the proper “remorse”, which one could fairly translate as “beg for our mercy”. Apparently, China has opted out of positive reinforcement as a means to gain cooperation from Tibetans.

China has its hands full now, and the problem has gotten worse with their crackdown. Instead of remaining localized to Lhasa, activists report that the riots have spread to neighboring regions. Since Tibet borders on Uigher territory on the north, any unrest on its eastern border hikes concerns of radical Islamist terror. The Uighers in al-Qaeda could see this as an opportunity for their organization to create its own, more violent events in areas bordering Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan.

Meanwhile, the increasing violence of the Chinese authorities have some in Europe second-guessing the IOC’s award of the Olympiad to Beijing. Opinion leaders warn against a boycott — for the moment:

“I don’t see any use in an Olympic boycott,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel told the mass-circulation daily BILD. Meanwhile, the Australian Olympic Committee said Monday it was not its job “to take the lead in addressing such issues as human rights or political matters.”

German commentators have been just as cautious on Monday morning, piling criticism on Beijing but stopping short of a call for a boycott. Most think the Games will just reveal China’s true nature to the world — though one writer argues, a bit controversially, that Beijing’s refusal to negotiate with its peaceful dissidents has promoted terrorism.

The IOC should never have agreed to stage the Olympics in China in the first place. However, now that it has made that decision, a boycott would do nothing to help the Tibetans or the oppressed Chinese, either. It would anger and embarrass Beijing, but it would settle nothing, as our boycott of the Moscow Olympics proved in 1980.

Don’t get me wrong; I don’t believe for a moment that the Olympics are anything but political. I’m not arguing that a boycott would be wrong because it would inject politics into sport — that happened decades ago and hasn’t stopped since. It’s just an ineffective way to press for political change, as history has demonstrated repeatedly. Hitler failed to impress people with fascism in 1936, the East Germans failed to prove the inevitability of communism by poisoning its female athletes with hormones, and both the US and the Soviet Union failed to change the trajectory of the Cold War a single degree with their reflexive boycotts in 1980 and 1984.

If the world wants to change China’s behavior, they can start by locking them out of economic markets. It will cost everyone a fortune, and with today’s market instability, it may be the worst possible time to try. However, that would be a lot more effective than defaulting at a sports meet and would show real commitment.

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