Human Rights and Past Olympics - Hamish McDonald August 6, 2008

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Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2008/05/20/Is_China_Fit_to_Host_the_Olympic_Games

Australian Journalist Hamish McDonald contrasts the outpouring of protest over the Beijing Olympic Games to silence in previous years - such as the 1904 games in St. Louis, Missouri - when other questionable human rights issues were largely ignored by the international community.

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Prince Charles has declined to attend the Beijing games as a protest against perceived human rights abuses. Steven Spielberg heads a list of celebrities urging others to stay away. There has been unprecedented worldwide public protest over China's human rights abuses.

However, are Chinas failings any greater than those of other nations that have hosted the Olympics? What of China's great strengths -- do they count for nothing? Where does the balance lie?

Should sport be 'quarantined' from the politics of such matters? And in any case, who are we to judge such matters when there are so many problems in our own backyard? - Intelligence Squared Australia

Hamish McDonald has spent twenty of his thirty-five years in journalism based in Asia - in Indonesia, Japan, Hong Kong, India, and China, where he was the correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald based in Beijing.

He is currently the Asia-Pacific editor for the Sydney Morning Herald. He has been political editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review. He is the author of several books.