Mia Farrow and the 'Genocide Olympics'

On September 12, 2007 The REVIEW's Joe Malchow sat down with Mia Farrow to discuss the China's human rights record and the Olympics.

In front of an assembly of cameramen, Mia Farrow gestures to a collection of tattered green scraps, the remains of a makeshift fibrous roof which once, for a brief time, kept some of the sun and some of the rain from seeping into refugee huts arrayed, haphazardly, in far eastern Chad. The refugee village is called Oure Cassoni; the refugees are Darfurians, persecuted and killed, in thousands, by Muslim Sudanese militia called the Janjaweed. Ms. Farrow has just arrived in New York City from Chad, and displays these evidential shreds for the cameras.

As one of several United Nations “goodwill ambassadors, Ms. Farrow, an American cinema legend, has a rigorous travel itinerary which brings her all around the world in attempts, successful and unsuccessful, at raising awareness about various humanitarian concerns. But in alliance with an organization called Dream for Darfur, Ms. Farrow has espoused above all the Darfurians cause. And that is why she has made the Chinese government her primary foe.

The timeline that leads from the present to the summer of 2008—to the Beijing Olympics—is “superimposed over deaths and immeasurable suffering, she tells me. Sudan's brutal Khartoum government is reliant on oil revenue, provided primarily by China, which purchases two-thirds of the Sudan's oil exports. Many Western nations want little to do with Khartoum; China, not constrained by the same moral standards, has found the genocidal regime to be a profitable partner. Because of this, Ms. Farrow says, China has given Khartoum “diplomatic cover in international forums, blocking or impairing key Security Council votes. Moreover, the Janjaweed militia is in possession of Chinese military hardware.

All of which prompts Ms. Farrow to impose publicly on the 2008 games the grim appellation “Genocide Olympics.?She, who by her own admission has “shirked interviews all my life, now totes this message worldwide and in newspapers.

Beijing sees clouds gathering over its coming out party. Brutish imperialism, tyrannical government, and the evils of communism itself: these are protests for which the Party is prepared. But the revelation that Beijing sustains a genocide of which Americans and Europeans are already keenly apprised—that threatens to draw a darker shadow yet over the games. At an August meeting, the Chinese ambassadorial retinue pleaded to Dream for Darfur's representatives that it simply “was not fair?to connect the Olympics and Darfur.

But China's slogan for the games, Ms. Farrow contends, is itself wildly fallacious. “One world, one dream, is the moniker concocted by the government. “But there is one nightmare that China [cannot be] allowed to sweep under the rug, and that is Darfur. The Dream for Darfur movement warns that, if China fails to ease the violence and “bring the Olympic dream to Darfur, Darfur will instead “be brought to the Olympics. Organizers do not elaborate on precisely what the plans are, but have set January 2008 as a deadline for a Chinese about-face.

Will Ms. Farrow be at the games? “I would never get a visa, she says. She quotes a friend: “Those who will go the Olympic games do not hear the cries of the dying.?

“There won't be any protestors at the games, she predicts. But oughtn't there be banners unfurled, proclaiming the cruelties of the single-party state, for the world to see? Since Tiananmen Square, of course, no serious message of protest has slipped China's censors. “I would want to see it, and I would worry very much for the safety of whoever held that banner.?But then: “I would do it. I would do it. Find a way to get me there, and I will go there and do it.

Mr. Malchow is a Bartley fellow at the REVIEW.