Far from the glow in China, there are no games in Darfur

By Dewayne Wickham - USA Today, Opinion
Tuesday, August 12, 2008 - Web Link
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August 12, 2008

What China wants during these Olympics it cannot be allowed to have. More than anything else, the emerging superpower wants to bask in the glory of its role as host of the quadrennial global sports festival. It wants the worldwide embrace that traditionally has come to nations bestowed this honor.

Of course, such acceptance hasn't always been merited. Nazi Germany hosted the Olympics in August 1936, just 11 months after it stripped German Jews of their citizenship and banned them from marrying blond, blue-eyed Germans. And the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan seven months before Moscow hosted the Olympics in July 1980.

The U.S., which took part in the 1936 Olympics but boycotted the 1980 contest, is represented in China by 596 athletes and George W. Bush, the first U.S. president to attend an Olympic opening ceremony abroad. Bush said it "would be an affront to the Chinese people" if he didn't attend.

He ought to be more concerned about the people of Darfur, the embattled region of Sudan where it's estimated that 300,000 people have been killed and 2.7 million displaced by fighting that has raged in the African country since 2003.

Three years ago, Bush called the attacks by government-backed militias on ethnic minorities in Darfur a "genocide." In July, the International Criminal Court indicted Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir on genocide charges and is considering issuing a warrant for his arrest. China is Sudan's biggest arms supplier. If the Sudanese leader were proven to have committed genocide, China — which gives Sudan the means to carry out this carnage — would be guilty of complicity.

China's sins

China's unbroken link to the genocide in Darfur should make a lot of people cringe at the legitimacy the Games now taking place in Beijing give the world's largest communist nation. But these days, the centuries-old tradition of the Olympic Truce, where warring factions would suspend fighting during the Games, has been replaced with one of indifference. As the rape and slaughter of people in Darfur go on, the U.S. Olympic team picked a refugee from Sudan — who is now a U.S. citizen — to carry this country's flag during the opening ceremony last week.

China had to be relieved that it got off so easily.