The Wall Street Journal
By SHAI OSTER and GEOFFREY A. FOWLER
April 26, 2007; Page B1

BEIJING -- The Olympic torch is increasingly lighting up political controversy for China.

Today, the host of the 2008 Summer Games plans to reveal the route of the torch relay that will carry the Olympic flame into Beijing. But in what may be a prelude of things to come, four people were detained on Mount Everest yesterday for protesting a proposal to carry the flame up the world's tallest mountain, on the border with politically sensitive Tibet.

Taiwan's government, too, has complained about being included in the torch relay as part of China. The island, which Beijing considers a breakaway province, wants to be seen as part of the torch's international route instead.

The torch relay is just the official beginning of China's political Olympics. Just as corporations are trying to use the Beijing Olympics to promote their brands, human-rights activists and other groups are seeking to leverage the global attention on the Games for their own causes. Some are even talking of a possible boycott of the entire event.

Protestors, seeking everything from greater rights for China's ethnic minority groups to independence for Tibet, have started publicity campaigns tied to the Olympics. On Saturday, Harvard University will host a conference about how the 2008 Games can influence human-rights causes.

A particularly contentious cause centers on China's support of Sudan as fighting continues in that African nation's devastated Darfur region. Sudan's biggest ally is China, which buys some two-thirds of Sudan's oil. U.S. speed skater Joey Cheek is recruiting athletes to use the 2008 Olympics to pressure China to take more action to end the fighting in Darfur.

The International Olympic Committee is trying to distance itself from political causes. "We are not in a position that we can give instructions to governments in how they behave," Hein Verbruggen, head of the IOC's coordination commission for the Beijing Games, said yesterday. But after being asked about the Darfur and Tibet protests, IOC president Jacques Rogge admitted, "We certainly are going to have more of this. We know that."

Already, the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders is calling for a boycott of Beijing's Games. François Bayrou, a candidate in France's presidential race earlier this month, has called for France to boycott the games over Darfur. "If this drama does not stop, France would do itself credit by not coming to the Olympic Games," he told a rally recently.

Chinese officials vow that the tactics to politicize the Games won't work, and point to recent actions they have taken to improve the situation in Darfur. Earlier this month, a Chinese government envoy to Sudan called on Khartoum to be more flexible in accepting international peacekeepers, and said sanctions would only worsen the humanitarian crisis there.

"We are against any attempt to politicize the Olympic Games," says Sun Weide, spokesman for the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games. "That is against the purpose and principals of the Olympic movement."

China's Olympic organizers say this isn't the proper forum for a discussion of international affairs. "I heard some people are saying they would boycott the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games to protest China's policy over Darfur. They are either ignorant or ill-natured," Assistant Foreign Minister Zhai Jun told reporters after his trip to Sudan.

In any case, persuading athletes to set aside lifelong ambitions and boycott the games is unlikely to occur. Boycotts have been staged under different circumstances, though, when Cold War tensions led to boycotts in the 1980 Moscow Games and then the 1984 Los Angeles Games.

"A faction of the activist group is calling for a boycott, and those cries are going to get louder," says Mr. Cheek, adding that he doesn't support a boycott. Other tactics being considered include wearing armbands during the opening ceremony and competitions or staging a walkout or sit-in at key events, he says.

Human-rights groups are enlisting the help of Hollywood to further their causes. Late last year, a handful of former Olympics champions, along with activists and actor George Clooney, visited China to lobby Beijing on Darfur. Actress Mia Farrow recently called for director Steven Spielberg to step down from his work on the opening ceremony of the Games, slated for Aug. 8, 2008.

Mr. Spielberg sent a letter on April 2 to Chinese President Hu Jintao condemning the genocide in Sudan and asking the Chinese government to use its considerable influence in the region to bring an end to human suffering there.

"This is [China's] post-Tiananmen Square coming-out party," said Eric Reeves, a Smith College professor who is one of the leaders of the Darfur movement, referring to China's brutal repression of student protesters in 1989. "They are counting on the international community having forgiven and forgotten."

Political concerns could also cause headaches for the Games' corporate sponsors, who are helping underwrite the event and have each spent tens of millions of dollars just for the right to use Olympic logos on their marketing. The U.S.'s National Basketball Association signed a deal with the Beijing Olympics Organizing Committee and FIBA, basketball's world governing body, to cooperate on in-arena entertainment during the basketball portion of the Games.

More than almost anything, Beijing fears a tarnished image. Behind the scenes, Chinese officials have been working hard to defuse some of the controversial issues. The international environmental-advocacy group Greenpeace, for example, is working with Olympic organizers. In a move applauded by free-press advocates, China has eased some of its restrictions on foreign journalists reporting in China.

It doesn't appear that the controversy over China's role in Darfur will go away soon. The latest changes in Sudan appear to have bolstered the belief of activists that the way to Khartoum passes through Beijing.

"If anything, the recent developments show the linkages we are trying to make between Darfur and China are beginning to take hold," says David Pressman, a New York-based civil-rights lawyer who accompanied Mr. Clooney on his trip. "Are we there yet? No. Do our tactics change? No."

Meanwhile, the New York-based Students for a Free Tibet began their Olympic effort a week ago with a campaign sending thousands of emails to the IOC. The group says that yesterday, it erected a banner at an Everest base camp that read "One World, One Dream, Free Tibet 2008," echoing the official Beijing Olympic slogan.

"Tibetans world-wide are looking to the 2008 Beijing Olympics as an unprecedented opportunity to expose the truth about Chinese rule in Tibet," said Tenzin Choeying, the National Director of Students for a Free Tibet India, in a statement.

The IOC maintains that the Games' presence in China is only a force for good. "Would any political situation be better if we were not coming here?" asked Mr. Rogge, the IOC president. "Certainly that would not be the case."