The Saddest Medal of the 2008 Olympic Games

This Olympic Games was majestic, a coming out party for China with all of the bells and whistles. China won the most medals, including the most gold medals. China won a new respect for its status as a world power - confident, gleaming, and strong. Many view these Games as the best ever, a shiny superlative that masks what many thought were going to painful and controversial Games.

It saddens me to see the Olympic Games become the farce of 2008. It's distressing to see the media and the public placidly ignore China's remorseless oppression of civil, political and religious rights within its own borders and its Machiavellian support for dictators and genocidal regimes abroad (Sudan) in favor of focusing on the spectacle of Beijing and the "spirit of international cooperation".

One instance where Olympic glory is overshadowed by China's realpolitik is with the case of Sudanese track and field star Ismail Ahmed Ismail who took the country’s first medal, winning silver in the men’s 800 meters. In April, Reuters ran a story about a number of Sudanese athletes from Darfur with Olympic aspirations. Their inspiring story, of athletic determination and success in the face of a war-torn experience, is mitigated by the backdrop of the genocide going on in Darfur. Over 200,000 people have died since 2003 alongside the 2.5 million displaced by the conflict in the arid region of Western Sudan, an area the size of France with few roads, but many perils. Ismail fought his way out of this horrible existence to win silver in Beijing. Its an amazing accomplisment, but sad consolation to the millions of Darfuris who've died and been displaced by the stolid and fierce support China has offered the genocidal National Congress Party led by Omar al-Bashir.

The press coverage ahead of the Olympics was dominated by protests from human rights groups and Western leaders about China's economic, political, and military support for the Sudanese regime. People were supposed to use the "Genocide Games" as a medium to protest China's silence toward human rights both at home and abroad. These protests never materialized in any coherent form and were glossed over by the spectacle of the opening ceremonies and the glitter of gold medals and world records.

Ismail Ahmed Ismail's accomplishment is overshadowed by the genocide perpetrated against his people by the Sudanese government, and it must be. The country's longtime President Omar al-Bashir is facing charges of genocide from the International Criminal Court for the situation. Ismail was hailed as a national hero and his picture — wrapped in a Sudanese flag — was emblazoned across the front pages of the country's press. What should be a source of pride for Sudanese, and the world, is to me a sham and a shame.

Crime against humanity in Darfur right now

The Sudanese government has made it clear they intend to negotiate with one hand while crushing Darfur with the other. The Sudanese government, as the peace talks in Libya began, called a unilateral ceasefire. At the same time, they were forcibly relocating internally displaced persons from Otash camp in Southern Darfur, near Nyala. United Nations humanitarian chief, John Holmes:

"Given that security forces were threatening the displaced with sticks and rubber hoses at Otash camp, the involuntary nature of this relocation is clear…10 armed pickup trucks rounded up refugees at Otash on Sunday. U.N. and aid workers were initially barred from the camp, but eventually got in to see eight large commercial trucks being loaded with the belongings of women and children”.

The images conjured by what is happening in Otash are not pretty (please go to the link for more details). Women and children being separated from their male relatives, from their belongings, and being forcibly relocated to “safety” is reminiscent of the treatment received by Jewish women and children before they were loaded onto trains and sent to concentration camps during the Holocaust.

My purpose in making this allusion is neither to shock nor to shame, and not to minimize the gravity of the Holocaust, but to describe what is happening in Darfur. A semantic debate over genocide has no purpose other than to distract from the fact that innocent people are being forced from their temporary homes, rounded up into trucks, and driven off in the middle of the night by government troops brandishing semi-automatic weapons, sticks, and rubber hoses.

Deportation or forcible transfer of population is a crime against humanity according to the Rome statute of the International Criminal Court when it is committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population. What happened in Otash on Sunday night and into Monday in October 2007 fits this definition. Please go to the Aegis Trust to learn more about this situation and what you can do.