Above: the mock set of Olympic rings ordered to be removed due to the demands of the IOC

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In the run up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) defended its choice of China by arguing that the Games could contribute to the democratisation of an authoritarian regime, making a closed society more open and bringing the force of international law to bear on the hosts. As we now know, the record proved less impressive than the claims. In fact, there is a stronger case to be made for the obverse—that the Olympics can contribute to the coarsening of democracy. The 2010 Winter Olympic Games, which start on 12th February in Vancouver, is a case in point.

In September 2009, an art gallery in downtown Vancouver put up a mural outside, depicting a mock set of Olympic rings with four unhappy faces and one smiley face. Under one of the new city bylaws required by the IOC, the mural was classified as a form of graffiti and the gallery’s landlord was told to remove it. Given how much graffiti there is in this part of Vancouver, the city council’s intentions were all too transparent. By itself, this incident does not amount to much. But it is one of many instances where the demands of the IOC and its corporate-media allies have come into conflict with Canadian law and democracy.

The IOC’s refusal to countenance women’s ski jumping at the Games on ludicrous and inconsistent technical grounds (see Sporting life, January 2009) has trumped Canada’s human rights and equality legislation. More worryingly, British Columbia passed an Act that gives the police the power to enter homes and other premises displaying “anti-Olympic” signs. Vancouver’s homeless population is also under scrutiny, with new bylaws allowing the council to sweep people into shelters if the weather is too inclement, while many of the main public spaces that they use are now closed for pre-Olympic renovation. One of the legacies of the Games will be a citywide network of CCTV cameras.

Protest, thankfully, has come from many directions, including civil liberties groups, anti-poverty campaigners, environmentalists and anarchists. They have had plenty to protest over. The usual promises surrounding the Olympic village—that it would become a socially responsible, mixed-use, mixed-income neighbourhood after the Games—have been scrapped and much of the land flogged to private developers. The environmental impact of new venues and roads has been considerable and bitterly opposed. Following Beijing’s abysmal lead, Vancouver is offering “safe assembly areas” in which people are allowed to protest—and where they will be conveniently sidelined. But anyone who steps outside these gilded cages will find over 16,000 security personnel on hand to deal with them. Canada plans to deploy twice as many troops for the Games as it has in Afghanistan.

However, the wave of protest coming from Canada’s indigenous peoples—now referred to as First Nations peoples—will be harder to deal with. Canada has been here before. There was much disquiet over the opening ceremony at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, which featured white Canadians painted and costumed as indigenous people, performing ersatz dance moves to western pop embellished with “Indian” tom-toms. The 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics dispensed with the minstrelling but framed indigenous Canada in the colonial narrative of doomed but noble savages. Those Games also faced significant protest from the Lubicon Lake Cree Nation, whose lands were being taken from them by key sponsors of the games, such as Shell and Petro-Canada.

This time around, Vancouver sought to do things differently, making the four First Nations of the Pacific coast notional co-hosts with the city, and using indigenous imagery for the logo and mascots of the Games. But the strategy of co-option has sparked a backlash. Many First Nations Canadians object to the Disneyfication of their mythological spirits and creatures and argue that the four First Nations hosting committee is a PR sham. More substantively, many groups have protested over the use of their land for new venues, infrastructure and tourist facilities designed to piggyback on the Games. Those lands have never been legally ceded to the Canadian state, the IOC or anyone else.

Accusations of harsh treatment by the police and authorities are ongoing as protests by First Nations groups continue to be broken up, while activists claim to have been harassed by VISU—the alarmingly named Vancouver 2010 Integrated Security Unit. In late 2006, Harriet Nahanee, a 71-year-old Pacheedaht elder, was arrested after a protest against road building in the indigenous-owned lands of Eagleridge Bluffs. Jailed for two weeks after showing insufficient contrition in court, Nahanee caught pneumonia in prison and died soon after.

All of this is a cakewalk compared to the treatment meted out by the Chinese state to its protesters and ethnic minorities. Yet it is cut of the same cloth and that is the real shame. The Beijing Olympics were meant to make China more like Canada. Vancouver 2010 has managed the opposite.