Twenty years later: politics again

As it could be foreseen, the Beijing Olympics are raising various political issues, as it didn’t occur since twenty years at least, with the Seoul Games in 1988. In my other blog (in Italian) I already wrote about the Darfur question, and the proposals which have been made by various personalities, in particular actress Mia Farrow, to use the Olympic Games in order to force China to change its policy in Sudan. Recently, the weekly Italian magazine Internazionale published an article on the issue, relating the position of various US newspapers, such as The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Times. Today, during a press conference in Beijing, the IOC itself was forced to intervene in the debate, confirming its classical position and just making a vague statement: “we believe that the Olympic Games will have definitely a positive, lasting effect on the Chinese society”. Though not intervening in political matters is one of the IOC fundamental credos, an interesting article from the site Asia Sentinel, published in the French magazine Courrier International, reminds that in June 1987, one year prior to the Seoul Olympics, a series of violent demonstrations spread through South Korea, and the IOC forced the regime to stop them, threatening to withdraw the right to organize the Games. It seems to be the scenario at which most of the opponents to the Beijing regime are aiming. In any case, the next fifteen months promise to be hot.