Tory MP Calgary’s Anders decries ‘torch goons’ at Beijing Olympic relays

Last Updated: Thursday, April 17, 2008 | 1:50 PM MT
CBC News

An outspoken Calgary Conservative MP has lashed out at China’s human rights record ahead of a scheduled visit with the Dalai Lama, suggesting Tibetans are ready to start an “insurrection” during this summer’s Beijing Olympics.

“China is the worst human rights abuser in the world and it’s not just against Tibetans, it’s against their own people, their own population,” Anders told CBC Radio morning show The Calgary Eyeopener on Thursday.

Anders, the Tory MP for Calgary West, dismissed comments from the Chinese Embassy in Ottawa on Wednesday that Friday’s visit could hurt already strained Canadian-Chinese relations.

He said now is the perfect time to meet with the Dalai Lama, given China’s crackdown on Tibetan protests ahead of the Olympics.

Beijing Games ‘100 per cent propaganda’

He said the Beijing Games are “absolutely 100 per cent a propaganda exercise” that also “has similarities” with the 1936 Summer Games held in Berlin at the height of the Nazi dictatorship.

“The fact that they’ve got torch goons who are going from country to country intimidating athletes as they run is an example of that,” he said, in reference to tracksuit-clad Chinese security officials who have flanked the Olympic torch during its five-continent tour.

Anders said he believes the Dalai Lama is currently China’s best ally because he is calling for peaceful dialogue with Chinese officials on autonomy and sovereignty for the Tibetan people.

“There are many Tibetans, I think, that would say the time for pacifism is over, and they would prefer a more strident position, and a possible insurrection in Tibet during the Olympics,” Anders said.

He said no Canadian politician should attend the Games, but stopped short of calling for a full-on Canadian boycott.

“I don’t want to see the athletes abused in the opening ceremonies and have them be part of some grand spectacle to try and prove China’s might to the world,” he said.

Anders also targeted the Ontario government for recently sending its trade minister to Beijing to be “wined and dined” by Chinese officials while dissidents and practitioners of Falun Gong — a meditative practice the Chinese government likens to a cult — are brutally suppressed.

“You have to realize that’s done on the back of slave labour and people who are suffering in those camps and everything else that’s going on there,” he said.

Anders, a longtime pro-Tibet activist, is no stranger to controversy.

Eight years ago, he attended a Chinese New Year’s party on Parliament Hill wearing a T-shirt that declared “Free Tibet.”

Anders also was the lone MP to oppose Parliament’s move in 2001 to grant former South African president Nelson Mandela an honorary Canadian citizenship. Anders, then a member of the Canadian Alliance, called the anti-apartheid activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner a former “Communist and a terrorist.”

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/calgary/story/2008/04/17/anders-china.html