Beijing Olympic organizers stunned by Spielberg’s pullout over Darfur

February 13, 2008 (BEIJING) — Beijing Olympic organizers appeared to be caught flat-footed Wednesday by Hollywood director Steven Spielberg’s announcement he wouldn’t be involved with the Games’ opening and closing ceremonies because Beijing isn’t doing enough to help end the crisis in Darfur.

The announcement by Spielberg, who was to serve as artistic adviser, follows a months-long campaign by activists to highlight the authoritarian communist regime’s curbs on human rights and free speech at home, and its close relationship with the Sudanese government that is accused of permitting widespread abuses in Darfur.

Two spokesmen for the Beijing organizing committee said they were following the issue and preparing a response. The Chinese Foreign Ministry said it was seeking more information.

Spielberg’s announcement Tuesday could be a major blow to Beijing’s promotion of the Aug. 8-24 Olympics as a symbol of China’s integration into mainstream global society.

Beijing has invested billions of dollars and its national prestige into what it hopes will be a glorious showcase of China’s rapid development from an impoverished agrarian nation to a rising industrial power.

Already, however, the country has been heavily beset by criticism from rights groups, celebrities and international media that threatens to dampen the mood surrounding the Games.

Spielberg joined actress Mia Farrow and activists worldwide to demand that Beijing exert political leverage on Sudan’s government to help end the crisis, in which government-backed militia have battled rebels since 2003, leaving more than 200,000 people dead and an estimated 2.5 million displaced.

“China’s economic, military and diplomatic ties to the government of Sudan continue to provide it with the opportunity and obligation to press for change,” Spielberg said.

Spielberg, whose 2005 film “Munich” dealt with the killings of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics, said he had left unsigned his contract to serve as an artistic adviser to the Games’ opening and closing ceremonies in hopes that dialogue with China would produce results.

He noted China’s support for a U.N. resolution calling for a joint United Nations-African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur, but said that hadn’t been enough.

“The situation has never been more precarious – and while China’s representatives have conveyed to me that they are working to end the terrible tragedy in Darfur, the grim realities of the suffering continue unabated,” Spielberg said.

Spielberg was to have worked as a consultant to one of China’s best-known directors, Zhang Yimou, along with Australian Ric Birch, director of the Sydney Games’ ceremonies in 2000.

A request for comment e-mailed to Zhang’s spokesman garnered no immediate response, and Birch couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

China buys two-thirds of Sudan’s oil exports, while selling the regime weapons and defending Khartoum in the U.N. Security Council.

Already this week, the British Olympic Association was compelled to acknowledge that an agreement it asked its athletes to sign appeared to go beyond rules laid out by the International Olympic Committee barring any “demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda” at an Olympic venue or area.

Rights groups had castigated the BOA for attempting to gag its athletes and a number of other national Olympic committees responded by ruling out similar restrictions.

Beijing’s response to such criticism has been to angrily lash out at what it calls attempts to “politicize” the Games.

“To link the Darfur issue to the Olympics is a move to politicize the Olympics and this is inconsistent with the Olympics spirit and will bear no fruit,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said Jan. 24 – the ministry’s most recent comment on the issue.

Beijing has highlighted its own efforts to mitigate the situation in Darfur, including the dispatch of engineering troops to prepare for the arrival of a hybrid peacekeeping force. It says its economic ties are helping to reduce conflict by alleviating poverty.

(AP)