There are no circumstances that would make Canada boycott the Beijing Olympic Games, says Chris Rudge, the chief executive officer of the Canadian Olympic Committee.
But the president of the national athletes association, Athletes Can, says potential Olympians are facing a barrage of questions in interviews, pushing them to take sides on human rights in China and that may be putting them under pressure.
"I've heard the question is being posed more and more," Athletes Can president Claire Carver-Dias said. "If you go, are you supporting the Chinese record on human rights?
"The location of the Games is not usually a huge factor, it's about their performance and peaking at what they do every day of the year. But for some, [the politics] is a distraction."
A Tibetan demonstrator is seen near a flag representing the Beijing Olympics during a protest in Siliguri on Tuesday. (Diptendu Dutta/AFP/Getty Images)
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The International Olympic Committee and the COC are in lockstep in fending off suggestions of a boycott of the Games to protest China's human-rights record. They say the Olympics should be only about sport and not about politics.
The rhetoric was turned up a notch yesterday when 600 people protested in Lausanne, Switzerland, demanding the IOC call off a section of the Olympic torch relay in Tibet.
Then, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said the European Union should consider boycotting the opening of the Beijing Games in August if the Chinese government's harsh crackdown on demonstrations in Tibet continues.
Kouchner was responding to calls for a boycott by the head of the European parliament and the media watchdog Reporters Without Borders. He clarified that the French are not contemplating an all-out boycott and that such a move would not be "just."
Meanwhile, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabo and the Dalai Lama, the leader of Tibet's self-style government in exile, engaged in verbal sparring over the Chinese crackdown in Tibet.
Wen alleged the Tibetan protests were being organized by supporters of the Dalai Lama and were designed to undermine the Games. The Dalai Lama invited reporters to investigate, suggesting the Chinese might have set up the protest to discredit his push for Tibetan independence.
Rudge has visited Beijing twice and sounded out a number of sources on the politics and conditions athletes will be facing. Canadian athletes will not be muzzled to keep them from saying anything politically charged, as Belgian athletes will be whenever they are on Olympic property.
Rudge said Canadian athletes will go through an orientation designed to teach them how to stay out of trouble, but there will be no effort to silence them. Nor does he see Canada joining or starting a boycott.
"Absolutely not," said Rudge, who added the Olympics and the tens of thousands of eyes trained on Beijing would eventually lead to some positive changes, and reporters in the country for the Games will report on the human-rights situation.
"Things may not be happening in China as quickly as we would like, but to use the athletes as pawns is entirely inappropriate. Past boycotts have shown that."
Canadian Olympian Paul Henderson, a former member of the IOC and past president of the International Sailing Federation, says no form of protest would force political changes in the communist state.
"It is impossible to solve all the problems of the world on the backs of athletes," Henderson said. "We tried that once before, for political reasons. Richard Pound stood almost alone in Canada against the 1980 Olympic boycott led by [former U.S. president] Jimmy Carter and [former prime minister] Pierre Trudeau."
The Moscow Olympics were hit with a boycott by some Western countries protesting against the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan, but 80 countries resisted Carter's call and showed up, including some of sports' major players.
The British Olympic Association sent a team, as did France, Australia, Sweden, Finland, Spain, Greece, India and Belgium. In comparison, 92 countries had competed four years earlier at the Montreal Games, which were hit with an anti-apartheid boycott because some of the Olympic countries maintained sports relations with the former apartheid regime of South Africa.
The boycott trend continued in 1984, when the Soviet Union led a payback boycott of the Los Angeles Olympics by Eastern Bloc countries. Still, 140 countries attended.
Henderson pointed out the hypocrisy of using athletes as couriers to carry political messages while governments were still dealing with each other commercially.
"The 1980 Olympic sailing was at Tallin, Estonia," Henderson said. "… At the same time that our politicians were denying the athletes their chance to compete, Canadian freighters were unloading western wheat in the harbour.
"Attack the farmers first and see how that gets votes."
Henderson also questioned whether Canadians have the moral high ground on which to argue China's human-rights record, given Canada's record on the treatment of aboriginals.
A boycott by Canada would invite scrutiny of the country's human-rights ledger when the Winter Olympics come to Vancouver in 2010.
"I do not support China's human-rights history, but the United States and Canada's [history] with our first nations has not been exemplary," he said. "Under no circumstances should Canada even consider boycotting the 2008 Olympic Games. The athletes' dreams should not be sacrificed."
The Dalai Lama has urged his followers to remain peaceful and said he would resign as the head of Tibet's government-in-exile if the situation spins out of control.
The demonstrations in Lhasa, spurred by Tibetan Buddhist monks, have left 16 dead and dozens injured, according to the Chinese government.
Spokesmen for the Dalai Lama's camp say the figure for deaths is as high as 80.
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