Halftime at the Beijing Olympics

 

 

So we’re now almost halfway through the Beijing Olympics and already neck-deep in scandal and intrigue.

 

Following an absolute public relations nightmare of a torch relay, things in Beijing kicked off with an inauspicious start on day one with the stabbing murder of an American by a local man. Australian athletes were then urged by the Australian Olympic Committee to wear their uniforms in public to differentiate themselves from possible anti-American sentiment.

 

Widely commended as spectacular and memorable, the Opening Ceremony itself was shrouded in controversy when it was revealed that the televised broadcast of the event contained footage that had been computer generated. Beijing copped further criticism for using a cute nine year-old girl to mime the song “Ode to the Motherland”, in place of its original seven year-old vocalist – who was deemed not pretty enough and (what's worse) too snaggle-toothed. China’s central government was further attacked for then censoring the story, after erasing it from Chinese media websites.

 

International human rights activist group Amnesty International has also generated and been the target of further Olympic controversy. An award-winning awareness campaign by Amnesty highlighting human rights abuses in China was then ‘disowned’ by the group themselves, after an admission that the message presented was potentially ‘confusing’. (See the rejected images here.)
 

The ad campaign and increased attention on Beijing’s human rights situation has been criticised by Chinese nationals who see the furore as ‘China bashing’ and blatant racism by the Western media. 

 

If anything, the most encouraging thing about the Olympics so far has been that – for a city and a country so controversial – the scandal and intrigue around Beijing hasn’t yet swallowed up the main event.