Oly:China using Olympics as propaganda tool: Tiananmen dissident

AAP General News (Australia)
08-15-2008
Oly:China using Olympics as propaganda tool: Tiananmen dissident

By Francois Bougon

BEIJING, Aug 15 AFP - Bao Tong has enjoyed watching the Olympics, but the high profile
dissident says he finds the nationalistic fervour whipped up by the Chinese government
during the Games distasteful.

The 75-year-old former government official says he would trade all China's gold medals
to see greater respect of human rights.

"A medal for human rights would be much more significant than any gold medal," said
Bao, a close aide of late reformist Communist Party secretary general Zhao Ziyang.

"Medals for freedom of expression, for press freedom and democratic elections would
be more valuable than all these gold medals because they would bring something concrete
to ordinary people and contribute to world peace."

Bao, the highest-ranking government official jailed in the aftermath of the brutal
crushing of the 1989 pro-democracy movement in Tiananmen Square, is still held under house
arrest at his apartment in central Beijing.

For years he has been refused visitors, but taking advantage of China's pledge to allow
greater media freedom around the Olympic Games, foreign journalists have been able to
gain access to the dissident since early 2007.

On the ground floor of his apartment building several kilometres west of Tiananmen
Square, a man notes down the details of visitors and a woman dressed in a blue-and-white
Olympic T-shirt and wearing an armband saying "volunteer" calls the lift.

Bao himself opens the door to apartment 606, where he has been confined since his release
from prison in 1999 after serving 10 years in jail for his role in encouraging the protests.

While his movements are slow and deliberate, Bao does not look his age. His face bears
the marks of experience, but it is alive and welcoming, and he has has a steely look in
his eyes.

He said while many dissidents have been taken out of Beijing or put under house arrest
to keep them away from the media, he has been largely left alone although he is systematically
followed wherever he goes.

Bao said he had been watching the Olympic events on the large television that sits
in his main room and expressed enthusiasm about the sporting fare on offer.

"I like all the ball games such as basketball, table tennis, softball, volleyball.

I like them all," he said.

However when the conversation turned to the subject of the raucous crowds and the patriotic-tinged
Olympic fever in the Chinese media, and the ever-present chant "Zhongguo Jiayou (Go China,
Go), Bao's face darkened.

"In China we have an expression, 'looking at the world through blinkers'. That is what
I feel when I hear these chants, it is not a feeling of openness, we are not looking at
the Olympic Games, we are only looking at China."

China's quest for gold medals leaves him cold.

"Look at the Soviet Union, it won many gold medals, many more than China, but look
at where it is now," he said.

He was also scathing of China's state sporting system and its practice of taking children
away from their families to mould them into world-beating athletes.

"This will no doubt bring glory to the Communist Party and the country, but it hardly
inspires the people of the country to do sport and improve their health," he said.

Asked what he would do if he was Liu Xiang, the Chinese sporting face of the Games
and the world 110 metre hurdles world champion, Bao paused for a moment.

"If I was Liu Xiang I would not run because there is too much pressure. We are led
to believe that if he wins China will become a world power, and that if he loses it is
the whole of China which has been defeated."

Bao said the moment he did enjoy of last week's spectacular opening ceremony was when
the faces of 2008 children from around the world were projected onto a globe in the stadium.

"That was intelligent, that really represented the Olympic spirit."

AFP mo

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