nixsight

Story via Groonk

Something about the obsession with the Olympics that everybody around me is showing is unnerving me.

Oh, yeah, this is it.

Beijing – Brian Conley, creator of the well-known videoblog, Alive in Baghdad, was detained with his friend, Jeffrey Rae, early Tuesday, August 19th in Beijing. Their detention appears to have taken place at the same time as that of international artist James Powderly, whose detention was reported Tuesday. Three other bloggers and activists, Jeff Goldin, Michael Liss, and Tom Grant, have also been missing since Tuesday morning. Conley, 28, Rae, 28, Goldin, 40, Liss, 35, Grant, 39 are all American citizens.

The five “citizen journalists” and activists were in Beijing to support and promote human rights, freedom of expression, and freedom for the Tibetan people. They and numerous others have acted as an independent media centre for the dozens of pro-Tibet activists in Beijing who have sought to draw attention to the Chinese government’s occupation of during the Olympics

I’m uncomfortable when it comes to discussion of protest and political nonsense, partly because I don’t presume to understand the vagaries of it all, and partly because I often find the people protesting to be as irritating and sanctimonious as the people that they are protesting against.

But in the case of China and the Olympics, I’ve been finding that the issue of the human rights record and the freedom of expression issues have been a little too much to bear. It’s a little too much like Michael Jackson turning up at the Brits and putting on a show with a stage full of worshipful kids.

I don’t know of Brian Conley, beyond the unfortunate namesake issue, but something about this sits uneasy in the pit of my stomach.

Especially in light of the creepy propaganda on display here.

The Olympics are obviously all about hope, peace and the spirit of competition without aggression, right?

It helps, I suppose, that I’m not very interested in sport in the first place. But it will be interesting to see how this turns out. It’s difficult to imagine, in normal circumstances, the US cheerily accepting the detaining of their citizens, but on the other hand, does present day America care about US citizens that are also activists against totalitarianism and human rights abuse?

Updates on this story will probably be posted here: http://freetibet2008.org/globalactions/citizenjournalists/