China is a bully.

All of us knew that long before giving Beijing the privilege of staging the Olympics this summer.

Now on the eve of the world’s biggest sporting event, the Olympic Torch relay is being reduced to a farce.

Protests have erupted along the Olympic Torch route in London and Paris, while more is planned from San Francisco to New Delhi.

European leaders are talking about an Olympic boycott while Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said he never planed to attend the opening ceremonies.

The Beijing summer Olympics has become the target of worldwide condemnation as the atrocities in Tibet caused by China’s occupation takes centre stage, once again showing that the games have little to do with athletic supremacy and more to do with politics.

It’s hard to remember a time when the summer Olympics have not been dogged by hypocritical politics after world leaders remained silent when the games were awarded.
In 1976, the protest over apartheid policies in South Africa led to some 30 countries boycotting the Montreal Olympics.

The U.S., Japan, West Germany and Canada protested the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan by boycotting the Moscow Games in 1980.

In retaliation, the Soviet Union, Cuba and East Germany stayed away from the Los Angeles games in 1984.

The boycotts did not achieve their objectives and penalized the athletes who strived long and hard to become Olympians.

Today’s calls for an Olympic boycott mean nothing to China which always had scant regard to those who chastise it for human rights violations.

Like before, such a boycott will have very little impact on the host nation.

While China deserves all the negative publicity it gets for its actions in Darfur and Tibet, activists and politicians should stop using athletes as pawns for their own agendas.

 If we as a global community feel that a nation deserves to be spanked for violating international codes of conduct, we should do it before the games are awarded, not after that that.

Now that the games have been awarded to Beijing, the world should use it as a spotlight on China’s brutal regime.

Forget the boycott. Go for engagement.

Make sure the real meaning of the slogan for China’s games — “One World, One Dream” — is beamed around the globe.

Use the Summer Olympics to show that the world has one dream — to make China respect human rights.

This will do more in shaping the global opinion of China than any boycott.

Let the games begin and good luck to China trying to control the voices of the global media and athletes that converge on Beijing.