Auntie: It's all games for big rich kids

Juan Samaranch: The Games of the 29th Olympiad in 2008 are awarded to the city of Beijing.

CHEERS

Mick O’Regan: Happy punters greet the news that Beijing has won the right to host the 2008 Olympic Games.

This was how an item started today on The Sports Factor (ABC Radio National). We're supposed to think this is just fantastic. Not a word about Juan Antonio Samaranch, one of Franco's Spanish fascists, a guy who presided over the corrupt Olympic Committee for years. Then it gets worse:

Mick O’Regan: There has been sustained criticism of the PRC over the years for its poor human rights record; firstly, how significant is an evaluation of that human rights records for the IOC?

Kevan Gosper: Well we’re not there to monitor human rights, we’re there to stage the biggest international sporting event on the globe. But we know that the Chinese have said that one of the benefits of the Games is it will continue to open up the country, and indeed in the last 20 years, they’ve opened up dramatically, you know they’ve become a member of the World Trade Organisation, they’ve got Expo coming to Shanghai just a couple of years after the Games. They’ve opened up market and democratic processes. However there is still criticism coming from around the world. A lot of people don’t take into account how much advancement there has been in this area, but I repeat, the discussion on human rights does come up from time to time but our preoccupation is with the staging of the Games, and I told you we’re very happy with that, and also with the freedom of the press relating to the Games. And that’s our main focus.

Mick O’Regan: But just on that: the sort of green and yellow cards that you referred to in the evaluation of preparations for the built environment, is there any sort of coding that goes with those less tangible but more politically sensitive issues like human rights?

Kevan Gosper: No, it would be quite wrong of us to have a measure on human rights as a sporting organisations. I mean, there are independent organisations and non-government organisations in the world who are responsible for the moving of such an issue forward, and every democratic government’s head who goes into China raises the subject. So whilst we obviously are concerned that there is progress, it really isn’t our province to lay down the law to China, a country of 1.3-billion, on this issue. Our preoccupation has to be that we are preoccupied to see Beijing stage a first-class international Olympic Games, and put the conditions forward they’re excellent for all athletes of the world, and as far as I’m concerned and the International Olympics Committee is concerned, it’s doing that.

Mick O’Regan: Australia’s senior Olympic official, Kevan Gosper.
Source: The Sports Factor

Real investigative journalism, that was, Auntie. You had Gosper on the run there. Hard hitting questions about the morality of the Olympic Games themselves, and their association with one of the most brutal dictatorships the world has ever known, while God knows how many Chinese citizens are being imprisoned, tortured and executed for their beliefs.

Google search torture china

Tagged: abc, radio+national, australia, human+rights, china, olympics, olympic+games, journalism