During the 1938 Olympics, British Olympic Footballers were forced to give the Nazi salute by Adolf Hitler, of course with complete cooperation from the British Government.
This just in from the Daily Mail in the UK:
“British Olympic chiefs are to force athletes to sign a contract promising not to speak out about China’s appalling human rights record – or face being banned from traveling to Beijing.
The move – which raises the spectre of the order given to the England football team to give a Nazi salute in Berlin in 1938 – immediately provoked a storm of protest. Competitors – likely to include the Queen’s granddaughter Zara Phillips and world record holder Paula Radcliffe – will be effectively gagged from commenting on China’s politics, human rights abuses or illegal occupation of Tibet.”
China’s miserable record of human rights violations are well known, as you can Google “China human rights violations“, to see just some of the massive amount of written material on this. China’s power to force visiting athletes to adhere to their own censorship rules is astounding, but the precedent for the Brits is already there, unfortunately.
The British Olympic Association has vowed to revisit the wording of the agreement. It will be very interesting to see how the United States Olympic Committee handles this.
Is China afraid of protests during the Olympics?
