Dutch Comedian Serious About Human Rights in China

Dutch actor-comedian Erik van Muiswinkel has joined the ranks of big name stars to publicly decry China's right to host the Olympics given the communist regime's long list of human rights abuses.

A 20-year veteran of Dutch stand-up comedy, television and film, Van Muiswinkel is closely tied to Holland's world of sport. He is best-known for his impersonations of leading sports figures and was himself a member of the National Youth Cricket team and is still active as a cricket coach.

Now he is making a name for himself in the sporting world in a different way.

Van Muiswinkel said he couldn't understand the world's silence while watching the last large totalitarian state proceed with the Olympics, particularly in Holland where people are normally quite vocal in defense of personal freedoms and human rights.

So he decided to put his sure-to-be controversial views in the spotlight to jump-start the debate.

Van Muiswinkel began last December by writing an open letter to Volkskrant, a social democrat paper in Holland popular with intellectuals, under the title "Don't party along with the Games" advocating a boycott of the Beijing Olympics.

Soon after this letter was published, van Muiswinkel was interviewed by many major national Dutch newspapers such as De Dag, and Dee Spits, followed by an appearance on Holland's biggest talk show, "Pauw & Witteman."

On the show, van Muiswinkel asked Dutch athletes to act according to conscience and not go to Beijing.

"You are the last ones to be able to do something, mainly to do nothing and stay at home," said van Muiswinkel, who felt this would have a very great impact because Holland has many star athletes.

Two days later, Dutch International Olympic Committee (IOC) member Hein Verbruggen appeared on the same show where he said that sports and politics should be kept separate and that the discussion about human rights makes him tired. The original plan was to have a face-off between the two but Verbruggen refused the station's invitation.

Van Muiswinkel then turned up the heat on February 19 with the YouTube release of "Nie Na China" (Don't go to China), a protest song he wrote and recorded with seven other artists. Although Nie Na China has a bouncy carnival beat, the lyrics are deadly serious, sharply criticizing the communist regime's human rights abuses, particularly inside its labour camps.

On February 20, van Muiswinkel talked about his campaign after the Chinese Spectacular performance in The Hague. Below is a summary from that interview, courtesy of NTDTV.

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Labour Camps and Falun Gong

"There are about five or six different charges you can make against the Chinese government and for each of those you could boycott the games. Just for Tibet you could do it, just for Darfur you could do it…You could also do it for the laogai , the [forced re-education through labour] camps that are all over China still. Amnesty International cannot get in there. They don't know, no body knows, how many people are in there. We only know that if [prisoners] appear after three or five or 10 years they're invalids… or they're dead.

"The testimonies of the Falun Gong people who have been in prison they are very impressive and very nasty. So if I want to give examples to Dutch people who don't know anything about the whole thing, I usually talk about Falun Gong."

"I heard about the 6-10 Office, all the details, all the gruesome rubbish. And I was really shocked and anyone should be.

"But the funny thing is that in this world where everything is communicated, we know what is happening in Vladivostok and in South Africa, all over the world. But this thing has been kept so quiet.

"No one knows exactly, but people always ask for figures and when they think it may be only a few thousand people, they think maybe it's not so bad. And I say, well, imagine this happens in Holland, if one person disappears here the whole country is in turmoil.

"So what about all these people just being dragged away in China? There is footage, there is film, of all this stuff on [Tiananmen] Square. There have been protests now. By and large I know what has happened over the years and I think we should all know. And as long as they [the Chinese Communist Party] go on with those practices, why should we go and party in Beijing and applaud all the beautiful buildings and tell them how wonderfully they have organized the Games?

"I believe they can organize the games, of course. The Chinese can build and organize everything, they don't have to prove that to me, I just want them to have a decent government that treats their people well."

Answering Critics

"There are people who say you shouldn't bother the athletes because they need to concentrate, they need to do their job.

But to van Muiswinkel this argument doesn't make sense. "The athletes in Holland are very well educated people. They have big mouths about the role of sport in society the importance of sport, the money that should go to sport. But at the very moment that sport takes a nasty turn in politics… then they say no, it's just a sport, it's just a high jump, it's just swimming. And as soon as they come back [from the Olympics] and they start educating children and holding lectures and that sort of stuff, then again society and politics are important. That's really an opposition that doesn't fit somehow.

"People are so concerned that our athletes will be disappointed. Well, sometimes you are disappointed in life, not everything works out. I don't forbid them to go, I just ask them to consider. And no one tells them what to do, they should tell themselves. Somehow I get the blame, but I personally have nothing to do with it, it's just that I throw up the problem and say these are the facts, have a look at them. And think about it, are we going to celebrate a party in that house?

"So the whole argument, you should not bother sports people—why not? I mean they're people like us. They can think for themselves.

"And then there's the argument, 'China is so open, we have the economy, we have the business,' which is true, and that cannot be stopped and that should not be stopped. It's like nature, it just happens. If a country opens there's going to be trade and even when China was closed there was also trade. You're never going to stop trade, never ever. So that's stupid to say, then you should also boycott the trade.

"But the Olympics is a very different story and I just cannot get that into the heads of those people who say, 'then we should boycott the tourist trade and the normal trade.' The Olympics is something different. It's a huge symbolic gesture of the world community that gives the Chinese government confidence: 'Yeah, you're doing OK, it's beautiful. You host the games, you organize them, and you're one of us again.'

"We should also be strict on China: You do not torture people; you do not let people disappear; you do not forbid religions—all very basic things. And that has nothing to do with ancient Confucian traditions or whatever. No, it's human rights, and that was my main point."

Human Rights

"I have had some help from Amnesty of course… They need to be on speaking terms with the Chinese government. Because they are still trying to get prisoners released, they are basically not a political organization. So in the end they don't want to meddle in politics.

"Whereas we can talk about human rights, but human rights in the end is politics. It's about the system you use in a country… It's about having no rights; if you are taken away you can't yell out, you can't call for help. While in the West at least here, you have your rights, you have your lawyer, you have exposure, you can fight back. And if you cannot fight back, we cannot even imagine how bad that is. If you are in the dark and there is just no one there…

"I have read so much about it. When I grew up we had the Soviet-Union, we had Poland, Czechoslovakia. We went there with our school class, we were told about the system. I read a lot about those times. And after the [Communist] system broke down there the archives were opened, films where made, books where written. We can know in detail how these systems worked."

Documentary

"I hope I can get one of our broadcasting companies to make a real thorough documentary on the human rights situation in China. Because I think there is a lot of footage, many films, they can make them themselves maybe, if they have the courage. But there is also much, much material that they can use. And Dutch people just don't know anything about it, as I noticed with my own friends, they just don't know. Collect together as much evidence as you can and just show it.

"I know about the [Chinese human rights] lawyer Gao Zhisheng. He was directly attacked… The interview with him that I watched, I was really impressed. The interview is half an hour, at the time when he was under house arrest. It was really very impressive. So I hope we will make this documentary."

Focus on China

"I think as the Games get closer, and even during the Games, and even after the Games, [human rights] will be an issue… But people's attention is focused now, and they are going to be more interested every week. And as the facts become clear, I think more and more people will agree that the Olympic Games were a present that the regime did not deserve yet."

Additional reporting by Jasper Fakkert and Peter Valk. Interview by Xiaoyan Song, courtesy of NTDTV.