The Mountain Speaks

"Any expression that is in line with the Olympic spirit I'm sure will be protected." 

"Any behaviour or speech that is against the Olympic spirit, especially against the Chinese laws and regulations, are also subject to certain punishment."

"Dedicated departments [will evaluate punishment for athletes who violate the IOC political protest ban]."

"I think for the athletes to participate in the Olympic Games, they should follow the spirit and requirements provided by the Olympic Charter,"

"The politicization of sports is one of the things opposed by the Olympic Charter."

Yang Shu, deputy director-general, international relations, Beijing Organizing Committee

Protesters hold protest posters during a protest against Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics by activists of the Tibetan Youth Association in Europe front of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, Saturday, Dec. 11, 2021. (Jean-Guy Python/Keystone via AP)

China is known to get really cranky when it is criticized. And there has been a lot of criticism to date of China. It's exclusive 'ownership' of the South China Sea, its takeover of once-democratic Hong Kong, its threats expressed kinetically against Taiwan, its exploitation of Uyghurs for forced labour, and incarceration of a million Uyghurs in Xinjiang for re-education, forced sterilization of Uyghur women, its occupation of Tibet and persecution of Tibetans...the list goes on, to include its latest forays into hostage-diplomacy.

 

So to state that Beijing is in bad odour in much of the world community is to understate the situation. Beijing feels under pressure to impress the world community once again with its ability to put on a world-class entertainment performance with yet another Olympic Games venue for February of 2022, after the original scheduled for 2021 had been postponed as a result of the very coronavirus that China itself had exported to the world at large.

 

Now that the games' opening is fast approaching and the deadline for completion of all the venues and awe-inspiring details meant to showcase China internationally, authorities involved in preparations for the Winter Olympics opening are getting a little edgy. The temporary mass migration of the international community coming to worship at the shrine of Chinese efficiency and stage production has been denied Beijing once again; not even local Chinese may enter the environs due to concerns over the entry of Omicron and its huge infectability.

 

Beijing will make the most of this collapsed opportunity to boast of its artistic/theatrical skills while hosting a world event in sportsmanship. But it is not prepared to be sportsmanlike about countenancing political criticism from its invited guests competing in this world-class event. Beijing will not tolerate being the subject of complaints, derision, lack of respect, or any hint of dissatisfaction with its internal affairs, much less its vaunted status globally as it expands its reach and offers other nations indebtedness in response to its generosity in allowing their natural resources to further enrich Chinese GDP.

 

And while it is true that in the interests of political neutrality in the celebration of sports excellence in individual and group performance, the International Olympics Committee has established rules against political protests at IOC events, their rules are not quite in the same spirit and rigid disaffection as that of Beijing's. Whose Olympics organizing committee has warned of punishments to fit the assault on Beijing's sensibilities to be meted out to offenders.

 

So would Beijing dare to hold any offenders hostage to its rage over political statements offensive to China? After all, if incarceration is an option for 'seditious' behaviour as a suitable punishment for those offending Beijing's authoritarian sense of outrage at the presumptuousness of its critics, hostage-taking will be in order. A threat, implied but real, that can be guaranteed to silence anyone oblivious to their presence in a country known for its unflinching abuse of international laws while it flaunts its own as supreme.

Toronto's cybersecurity research group Citizen Lab has reported the vulnerability that faces visiting athletes through the smartphone app Olympians are required to download ostensibly to track the state of their health in identifying COVID infections. The Lab has detected security flaws whereby personal data of users will be accessible to Chinese security sources. A list of political keywords identified by the app's code to reveal who might be disobeying the organizers' edict warning of repercussions as a consequence of anything political.

In anticipation of just such complicating, coercive and intrusive events, the U.S. and other free-world countries whose athletes will be participating in the Games advised their athletes to make use of "burner phones" on their Beijing trip in avoidance of surveillance. According to Zhao Lijian, foreign ministry spokesman, those countries "who are guilty of the charge themselves are accusing the innocent party without any evidence". Oh, for shame!

The sun sets behind the Olympic Rings atop a tower near the Yanqing cluster of Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, in Beijing, China, January 19, 2022. (Thomas Peter/Reuters)

"Deeply Shocked. And Appalled"

"Like all Australians, we are shocked by the report, by that evidence that was shown on Four Corners [Australian Broadcasting Corporation television program Four Corners investigation] last night. Deeply shocked."
"We have moved swiftly to get to the bottom of it."
"We need to get all the facts out as swiftly as we can. We need to expose the cultural problems, the administrative problems that allowed this type of mistreatment to occur."
"We want to know how this came about. We want to know what lessons can be learned from it. We want to know why there were inquiries into this centre which did not turn up the evidence and the information that we saw on Four Corners last night."
"This is a shocking state of affairs and we will move quickly to establish what happened."
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull

"[I want to thank the] whole Australian community for the support you have showed us boys [teen prison incarcerates] as well as our families."
"I would also like to take this opportunity to apologize to the community for my wrongs and I can't wait to get out [of prison] and make up for them."
Dylon Voller, 17, featured in investigation into prison abuse of young boys in Australia

"The impact of those years of brutalization must be immediately measured and he needs immediate assistance."
"Any child locked up in solitary confinement in the Northern Territory needs to be released immediately."
Peter O'Brien, lawyer for Dylan Voller

"[Dylan] deserves his life back. [He] lost everything ... lost hope."
"The last time I went to visit him there was no smile, there was no emotion, there was nothing. I couldn't give him anything to be positive about and that really broke me."
"I want him to know he's still a person and people still love him and he still has hope for a life."
Kira Voller, Dylan's sister 

Dylan Voller shackled into a restraining chair -- ABC news

Aboriginal Australian youth are sometimes defiant and socially deviant, as the term goes to express the kind of resentment engendered by systematic, institutionalized racism that afflicts most colonial-era-derived societies. Australia appears to have reached the conclusion at some time in the near past that the best remediative treatment for insufferable anti-social behaviour is to brutalize those exhibiting that behaviour, to persuade those placed in prisons where they are treated to even greater incidents of contemptible disciplinary punishment for spurning societal norms, to straighten out and fly better.

That is evidently accomplished by long episodes of solitary confinement, earned when young prisoners act out intolerably. This earns them a bout of tear gas and placement for weeks on end in isolation, but not before being exposed to physical brutality. Isolation bereft of natural light, running water or breathable air where the reek of urine and the scuttle of rats distinguish the environment is certain, authorities must feel, to engender a chastening effect. It is called a correctional system after all, and not for nothing. Unfortunately, for a teen who has spent his formative years in the system it doesn't appear to have worked.

Dylan Voller in and out of detention since childhood -- ABC News

The systemic abuse of children and teens, most of Aboriginal extraction, has produced a cadre of of youth who have never known normalcy in their lives, but somehow learned to live through and endure the unspeakably atrocious punishments that a clearly dysfunctional system believes they have earned. On the other hand, it could only be sadism imposed by psychopaths who would impose such vicious punishment on children for the crime of non-compliance with authority. Do the prison guards who exhibit those tendencies have a leg up on job selection?

In 2014 Dylan was among six boys tear-gassed as treatment meted out to ensure a "riot" didn't proceed; a concern that lodged in the imagination and nowhere else since closed-circuit television and video recordings staff themselves created indicated that one boy had escaped from his cell when it was left unlocked by a guard. In the program that was aired on Monday evening, 'corrections' officers appeared on screen tear-gassing children in their cells, wrestling them to the ground, calling them "little f---ers".

With the emergence of shocking footage of teenagers being assaulted and abused in juvenile detention centres, the ABC wants to hear any stories you have of similar acts. Contact us ABC

Footage from 2010 when Dylan was all of ten years old, showed him being hurled across his cell floor, kneed and knocked to the ground where he was stripped naked numerous times and kept in solitary confinement, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. Originally from Alice Spring, Dylan was imprisoned after a 24-hour meltdown when, high on methamphetamine, he attacked two men and a police officer. This could have been entitled Life As A Nightmare.

Dylan, said a social worker who has cared for Dylan, "has been in and out of trouble, needs to get serious counselling and it needs to be funded by the government. If a boy commits a crime, I'm not saying they don't have to face the music, but where's the duty of care? They need a place where they can be safe." All these revelations have utterly shocked the conscience of the nation; above all the government which disclaims any knowledge of such wretched situations victimizing children.

Oddly enough, the former Northern Territory children's commissioner, Dr. Howard Bath, undertook a lengthy investigation into this situation of institutional penal mistreatment. The fact that Australia was founded by the British as a penal colony must have tainted the atmosphere in perpetuity. The results of the lengthy investigation were presented to the government in 2012. It must have been neatly filed away. It had never been publicly released, let alone tabled in parliament.

Parliament is now engrossed in the earned embarrassment of nasty revelations.


Videos obtained by Four Corners show prison guards stripping, assaulting and mistreating teenager Dylan Voller over a period of more than four years. ABC