The 2008 Beijing Olympics, previously heralded as a hope of more openness and freedom in China, receive more and more openly demonstrated critique from artists and human rights activists. Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, who is partly responsible for the design of the Olympic stadium in Beijing, criticizes the way the Chinese government is exploiting the 2008 Olympics for their own purposes. From a recent article in Der Spiegel:

“The government wants to use these games to celebrate itself and its policy of opening up China. But there isn’t anything to celebrate. The political system is incapable of handling economic and social change. Now the system that caused these problems in the first place is struggling to remain in power. And who pays the price? Every individual in this society.”

Whereas Beijing Wide Open uses the Olympics as a platform to spotlight China’s occupation of Tibet:

“Since the International Olympic Committee awarded Beijing the 2008 Olympic Games in 2001, China’s human rights record has deteriorated. China executes more people than the rest of the world put together; Amnesty International monitored 1,060 cases in 2003 alone. 2003 also witnessed the first execution in nearly two decades of a Tibetan political prisoner, Lobsang Dhondup.”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 5th, 2008 at 4:16 pm and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.