Beijing Olympics 2008.

Should You Boycott Repressive Countries?

This August, about 10,000 athletes, 20,000 journalists and more than a million spectators from 200 countries are expected to descend on Beijing for the Olympic Games.

When the International Olympic Committee awarded the games to China back in 2001, many hoped that putting Beijing on the international stage would persuade the Chinese government to improve its record on human rights. Since then, China has been booming with construction as it races to complete stadiums, hotels and highways in time for the games. But as the recent unrest in Tibet has highlighted, the government is falling far short on human rights. And the finish line is fast approaching.

The situation in China has led some to consider a boycott of the Olympics, an idea that has proved both unpopular and ineffective in the past. Previous Olympic boycotts — by the U.S. in 1980 and by the Soviet Union in retaliation four years later — achieved little more than political posturing. The protests punished athletes who were forbidden from participating, and cheapened the accomplishments of those who weren’t allowed to compete against the world’s best.

A recent MSN-Zogby poll found only tepid support among Americans for a boycott: 31 percent favored it, while 47 percent opposed such a move. Even the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual leader, has said he opposes a boycott. Meanwhile, Reporters Without Borders, which criticizes China for its “glaring lack of freedom,” has advocated a novel solution: a boycott of the opening ceremony. On March 18, it asked heads of state, royal families and other political leaders to put pressure on China’s government by staying away from the games’ ceremonial inauguration.

England’s Prince Charles has already announced he will not go to the opening ceremony, and director Steven Spielberg has withdrawn from his role as an artistic consultant to protest China’s support for the Sudanese government and its stance toward the conflict in Darfur. “China has not kept any of the promises it made in 2001 when it was chosen to host these Olympics,” Reporters Without Borders said in a release. “Instead, the government is crushing the Tibetan protests and is imposing a news blackout.”