HERE ENGLAND
British athletes who will qualify for the Beijing Olympic Games, scheduled for summer 2008, will have to undertake not to raise - with interviews, statements or other - the question of the human rights situation in China. British newspaper The Mail on Sunday reveals today that the BOA (British Olympic Association), our local equivalent of the Olympic Committee, have developed a sort of "contract" to sign athletes to do (in the photo, the skier and marathon runner Paula Radcliffe) that participate in the upcoming Olympic Games.
These clauses, which specifically provides that the 'gag' on the issue of human rights. Who would not sign, free to do so, but - says the paper - it will stay at home in fact giving up the Olympics. According to the newspaper paragraph 4 of the document states explicitly: "The athletes are committed to not issue any comments or statements on sensitive issues of a political nature" while the paragarafo 51 points out that the Olympic Charter precludes the possibility of "political propaganda or demonstrations "the place of Olympic competition. The event trigger predictable controversy. The tabloid recalls the position taken by Prince Charles - who has already pleaded not willing to go to China for the Games - and evokes a gloomy year. The diktat of 1936 when, in Berlin, the IOC asked the British football team giving the Nazi salute.
ITALY HERE
"CONI did not stop the mouth of anyone." Italy sports goes in the opposite direction to England, which has decided to ban the athletes to express any form of criticism of China ahead of the Beijing Games: the secretary general (and expedition leader in Beijing) CONI Raffaele Pagnozzi, said that the IOC has no intention of silencing the sport. "Our athletes have to show the respect that in Beijing - said Pagnozzi - as it has always been the case in all countries. And of course everyone will be free."
According to the Head of Delegation of the Azzurri, who is also secretary of the European Olympic Committees, the British initiative threatens to "create more controversy than anything else. "England alone, he continued on this road, but it would have been better to address the issue in a shared, to be united with a common idea." In short, the CONI released by the athletes, but if a of them should display a banner or a symbol is the CIO who can intervene.
In 2004 in Athens Aldo Montano risk of losing the gold in saber for arriving on the podium with the words 0586: it was only the code number of Livorno, the his city, but the International Olympic Committee could not know.
CHRISTIAN GIORDANO
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