Olympics – UK athletes barred from political comments
By Adrian Croft
guardian.co.uk
LONDON, Feb 10 (Reuters) – British athletes will have to sign a contract pledging not to speak out on politics or human rights in China to be able to take part in this year’s Beijing Olympics, the British Olympic Association (BOA) said on Sunday.
To be a member of the British team, athletes will have to agree to a contract stating that they “are not to comment on any politically sensitive issues” involving the host country, BOA spokesman Graham Newsom said.
The Mail on Sunday newspaper said the contract effectively gags athletes from speaking out about issues such as politics, human rights or Beijing’s rule of Tibet.
Newsom said the BOA had no intention to censor athletes. It simply wanted to draw athletes’ attention to a rule in the International Olympic Committee’s charter barring political propaganda at Olympic venues, he said.
The proposed wording of the contract could still be changed, he said. “If there is a feeling that that doesn’t reflect what we are after, we will consider the wording,” he said. (more…)
David Mellor of the Daily Mail gets right down to it:
“The British Olympic Association’s squalid attempt to suppress legitimate criticism of the Chinese regime by British athletes – revealed in today’s Mail on Sunday – is a timely wake-up call for all of us who thought sucking up to dictators was something we had left behind in the Thirties.
Perhaps Simon Clegg, the BOA chief executive who has been so vociferous in support of his wretched piece of paper, which could have been drafted by Neville Chamberlain, should pause and consider what effect kow-towing to totalitarian governments had in the run-up to the Second World War: none on the dictators, lasting shame on the appeasers.
On May 14, 1938, in Berlin’s Olympic Stadium, the English football team were blackguarded by the Foreign Office and the Football Association into giving the “Heil Hitler” Nazi salute before a friendly game with Germany. It was a piece of contemptible cringing rendered even more pathetic and futile because Hitler, who hated sport, didn’t bother to turn up.
But that picture of impressionable footballers obeying orders from mutton-headed apparatchiks went round the world and became a lasting source of shame to this country. This was, after all, just weeks after Hitler had annexed Austria and came at a time when plans for the Final Solution were well advanced.” (more…)
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