Below The Beltway

In the wake of China’s crackdown against Tibetan protesters, calls are growing for some kind of international response:

PARIS (AP) - Moves to punish China over its handling of violence in Tibet gained momentum Tuesday, with a novel suggestion for a mini-boycott of the Beijing Olympics by VIPs at the opening ceremony.

Such a protest by world leaders would be a huge slap in the face for China’s Communist leadership.

France’s outspoken foreign minister, former humanitarian campaigner Bernard Kouchner, said the idea “is interesting.”

Kouchner said he wants to discuss it with other foreign ministers from the 27-nation European Union next week. His comments opened a crack in what until now had been solid opposition to a full boycott, a stance that Kouchner said remains the official government position.

The idea of skipping the Aug. 8 opening ceremony “is less negative than a general boycott,” Kouchner said. “We are considering it.”

Along the same lines, Wei Jingsheng, a Chinese dissident living in exile in the United States, says the IOC needs to do something soon:

If the IOC doesn’t move to put pressure on Beijing consistent with its obligations, it risks this Olympics being remembered like the 1936 Games in Berlin. Already, the spirit of the Olympics in Beijing has become associated with the word “genocide,” thanks to Spielberg and the Dalai Lama. Indeed, if the IOC and the rest of the world do not pressure Beijing to stop the crackdown and improve human rights now, a boycott of the Games will widely be seen as justified.

Tibetans have long chafed under the oppression of the Chinese Communist Party. In 1959, when the Dalai Lama fled to exile in India, Tibetans’ protests were harshly suppressed in a massacre that lasted more than a year. Since then, more than a million Tibetans have reportedly lost their lives because of the Chinese government’s policies.

In 1989, it was Chinese President Hu Jintao, then a provincial leader, who suppressed yet another revolt in Lhasa by bringing in the military to kill people in the streets. And, of course, the whole world knows what happened in Tiananmen Square that year.

Clearly, without human rights and the rule of law, neither Tibetans nor the majority Han Chinese are safe from persecution at the whim of Communist authorities.

The old lies and propaganda don’t work anymore. In the past, many Han Chinese didn’t know about the sufferings of Tibetans. Now thanks to travel, tourism, cellphones and the Internet, the majority Han understand that the Tibetan struggle against tyranny is the same as theirs.

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Jacques Rogge’s unwillingness to pressure Beijing at this moment is so tragic because these Olympics are the turning point in modern Chinese history. Having invited the world to polite tea, the Communist Party rulers have turned their palace of power into a global glass house. They can no longer show both the smiling face of “a peaceful rise” to the world and the stern face of brutal suppression at home.

The Olympics will force China to show its true face. Only international pressure, by the IOC and others, will make sure it is the face we all want to see.

Being the moral cowards that they are, it’s unlikely that the IOC will do anything and the world will go to Beijing in five months pretending that the Communist butchers of Tiananmen and Tibet are civilized men.