Last week, Canberra, Australia’s small capital city, played host to the controversial Olympic Torch as it makes its way around the world. Organisers described it as the most successful outing yet for the flame – which isn’t really saying much after the chaotic debacles of Paris, London and San Francisco and the security-deadened, almost invisible parades in cities such as New Delhi, Dar es Salaam, Islamabad and Jakarta.

To the outside world, it all looked fine. A crisp, clear Canberra morning, smiling faces, clean streets and a run uninterrupted by scuffles, attacks on the flame, disappearances into bayside warehouses or the heavy-handed actions of benign-looking men in matching blue tracksuits.

But all was not as it appeared.

Spurred into action by bad press on the relay to-date, the Australian Chinese community – and especially the large number of visiting Chinese students hosted by Australian universities – rallied to the defence of the torch relay and their (in their opinion much-maligned) country. Maybe 10,000 students bussed in from across Australia, and formed a formidable presence on the usually quiet streets of Canberra (population 330,000). Vastly outnumbering and – if media reports are to be believed – intimidating their pro-Tibet counterparts, the Chinese supporters ensured that, for the most part, all the cameras saw was a sea of red flags and support.

Perhaps this display of strength on the streets is part of the education of visiting students. Perhaps they’ll remember the feeling of getting out on the streets and defending what they believe to be right. And perhaps they’ll take that democratic spirit home. Perhaps.

The blue-tracksuited ‘Flame Attendants’ had dominated discussion in Australia in the lead-up to last week’s relay leg. All week Australian and Chinese security agencies contradicted each other about the role of this special force. Desperate to avoid the sorts of hands-on activities in London and other cities, Australian politicians and security agencies were clear that the Chinese tracksuit guys would have no security role to play. At all. Chinese officials said they would use their bodies to protect the flame. The Aussies said ‘No you won’t’. And so it went all week.

Australians were perhaps drawn to the tracksuit story out of nostalgia. Former Prime Minister John Howard was famous for his daily walks around Canberra and Sydney – escorted by security guards – and dressed in a patriotically coloured tracksuit. Since his loss at the polls in November, the tracksuit has all-but disappeared from Aussie cultural life. Enter the Chinese to restore order and give us something to talk about.

In the end, the Aussies prevailed. Footage even shows an Australian Federal Police officer giving one of the Flame Attendants’ a none-too-subtle shove out of the way during the run. Bet that doesn’t run on the nightly news in Xi’an or Beijing last week!

Another thing that won’t hit the airways in China is the sad fact that the once pure symbolism of the Olympic torch has been sullied. It once stood for pure sporting competition, showing a peaceful ideal that might exist in a world free of war and politics. But there’s no doubt that the Chinese government – modernising and improving at an astonishing rate but still guilty of reprehensible acts within its own borders – is using the Olympics to create goodwill. The torch, the relay and the Olympics themselves were sadly tarnished long ago by bad governments permitted to bask in the reflected glow of the greatest sporting event in the world. The Chinese aren’t the first – or possibly even the worst – but the hypocrisy of admonishing protesters and hiding behind the ‘Olympic Ideal’ while so blatantly committing human rights violations is every bit as noteworthy as Berlin in 1936 and Moscow in 1980.

So where does that leave the Olympic Flame – past Nagano, Japan, and Seoul, now on a respite guaranteed by a shuffle through the North Korean capital. And where does it leave the noble Olympic Games themselves? Same place they’ve always been – at an uncomfortable intersection between politics and sport, but now with more people than ever aware of the complications and contradictions of putting an unattainable ideal smack in the middle of everyday human stupidity.

–John Ryan

This entry was posted on Monday, April 28th, 2008 at 10:01 am and is filed under Asia, Australia & Pacific, Departure Lounge, Destinations, News & Alerts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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