An ethical 2008 Beijing Olympics ... perhaps

Shareholders and consumers who care about human rights should not let Olympic corporate sponsors off the hook. Their silence on abuses in the run-up to the Beijing Games makes their claims to support human rights especially disingenuous. Arvind Ganesan, director of Human Rights Watch’s Business and Human Rights Program. Source: Human Rights Watch  (HRW)

The reality of the Games, in Beijing in 2008, or Vancouver in 2010 is not that the poor will ever be the client base of the sponsors, that is purchasers of their imported services or products, but never could they ever hope of being able to afford the entrance price to attend the Games as a spectator.

Worker abuse was raised by John E .Carey, he wrote briefly about the grim lives of slave workers in China, and the demolition of a poor residential district that was too near the main stadium, suddenly gone, and no mention of government re-housing the destitute.

Why was this impoverished community demolished? To hide abject poverty from the eyes of tourists, the assumption presumably is that if poverty is not seen poverty does not exist.

There is already too much negativity enveloping the 2008 Beijing Games; perhaps, we might wonder if there is evidence of a colossal lack of common sense by the International Olympic Committee, (IOC), which might be, in some respects, culpable for thinking that a totalitarian country could be interested in learning how to treat its own people with humanitarian decency.

Added to which, there is the possibility that the sporting extravaganza was seen as a venue for political image making on a world stage unique for the Chinese government.

"In advance of the Beijing Olympics, Human Rights Watch has documented an increase in human rights abuses directly related to preparations for the Games."

In part, HRW identified the top sponsors to the current games with this qualifier:

"According to the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC’s) most recent quadrennial review, corporate sponsorships and broadcast fees accounted for 87 percent of IOC revenue from 2001-2004, and the TOP sponsors have paid at least $866 million total for the 2005-2008 period."

It would seem to be a charitable thing to do as investors to direct company spokespeople to voice concerns about Chinese government human rights abuses within China, or causing unrest in Tibet. Arvind Ganesan pointed out the:

“Human rights should be fundamental to any lawful society and serve as the bedrock principles of Olympism,” said Ganesan. “Particularly when abuses are a direct result of the Olympics, companies should never stay silent or try to dismiss the abuses as peripheral. The payment of tens of millions of dollars to sponsor the Olympic should increase the duty to speak out, rather than provide an excuse for cowardly silence.”

Indeed, there should always be voices heard speaking out against any human abuse, wherever it takes place.