China: Olympic sponsors ignore human rights

When it comes to speaking out for global social causes, the Csr divisions of multinational companies are from Mars and NGOs from Venus. At least, this is how one of the top 12 “Olympic Partner” sponsors of the Beijing 2008 summer games summed up the reasons for sponsors not speaking out against human rights abuses in China and Tibet in the run up to and during the event.

Human Rights Watch, one of the human rights NGOs that have most closely monitored and followed the human rights situation in China during the Olympics has spoken out against the approach adopted by the major corporate sponsors of the Beijing Olympics accusing them of failing to uphold their own principles of corporate social responsibility.

Sponsors get zero in Csr

“Sponsors have failed to speak out – either individually or collectively – about human rights abuses linked to the Beijing Games, and should be prepared to support the establishment of a permanent body inside the International Olympic Committee to monitor rights abuses at future Olympics”, said HRW in a press release on August 19.

The 12 TOP (“The Olympic Partner”) sponsors of the Beijing Games are Atos Origin, Coca-Cola, General Electric, Manulife, Johnson & Johnson, Kodak, Lenovo, McDonald’s, Omega (Swatch Group), Panasonic, Samsung, and Visa. Over the last 12 months, HRW has repeatedly contacted all TOP sponsors and met with five of these companies, off the record. Reportedly, the other seven failed to respond to repeated requests to meet with the organisation.

Human Rights Watch has been documenting the numerous human rights violations related to the Beijing Games, including ongoing media censorship, the abuse of migrant construction workers who built the Olympic venues, and the unlawful forced evictions of hundreds of thousands of Chinese citizens from their homes to make way for these venues. However, the organisation reveals that the sponsors were unwilling to address these abuses.

Comfort zones …

“The Olympic sponsors claim to be good corporate citizens,” said Sophie Richardson, Asia advocacy director at HRW. “But as they enjoy the Games from the comfort of their seats at the Olympic stadium, they should reflect on their failure to speak up for the Chinese citizens who built the stadium and their hotels, clean their hotel rooms, serve their meals or, in the case of Chinese journalists, try to bring them their news.”

One corporate executive told Human Rights Watch, “It is not our comfort zone to criticize countries.” Another said: “That is the role of human rights organizations. In this respect we are from Mars, you’re from Venus.”

Contradiction in terms

According to the organisation, such statements contradict the corporate social responsibility policies espoused in principle by several TOP sponsors’ websites. For example, the “GE Citizenship” section of General Electric’s website proclaims that, “GE seeks to advance human rights by leading by example – through our interactions with customers and suppliers, the products we offer and our relationships with communities and governments”. HRW points out that an increasing number of General Electric’s customers are Chinese citizens, the same who face systematic abuses of their human rights.

As highlighted by HRW, the Olympic sponsors’ silence on human rights abuses is more pronounced given that they have collectively spent about US$866 million (about 588 million euros) to gain status as TOP sponsors.

The human rights organisation had urged the TOP Olympic sponsors to take specific steps in line with their commitment to corporate social responsibility, including to publicly voice their support for the human rights dimensions of the Olympic Charter, which seeks to promote the “respect for universal fundamental ethical principles”, to publicly certify that their operations in China do not entail labor abuses or other rights violations and to support an independent investigation of the March 2008 crackdown in Tibet (a recommendation directed in particular toward Coca-Cola, Lenovo and Samsung, sponsors of the Torch Relay, which passed through Tibet). To date, however, there is no evidence that any of the Olympic sponsors has followed up in any meaningful way on any of these recommendations.

HRW is adamant that this inaction contradicts the very principles of corporate social responsibility as described in these companies’ annual reports and on their websites, as well as the standards of the Business Leaders Initiative on Human Rights (BLIHR), a group to which General Electric and Coca-Cola belong. General Electric is in an especially prominent and influential position as a TOP Sponsor and the parent company of NBC, which is the US broadcaster of the Games and has paid most for Olympics-related coverage. Coca-Cola, one of the sponsors of the torch relay, defended the passage of the torch in Tibet despite the repression of protests there in March 2008 and the continuing media clampdown in that region. Coca-Cola’s chairman Neville Isdell told the BBC on July 7, “I believe the Olympics are a force for good and if they were not a force for good, we would not sponsor them.”

Yet, as Human Rights Watch and other groups have extensively documented in the last 12 months, the Olympics cannot so far be qualified as a “force for good” in China. The run-up to the Beijing Games was marred by a worsening of human rights violations in China, and, since the August 8 opening of the Games, the Chinese government has intensified its crackdown on human rights defenders, has denied access to protest zones, and has reneged on promised media and internet freedom guarantees. In the run-up to the Olympics launch, foreign correspondents were beaten, detained, and subjected to death threats. Thousands of “undesirables” including beggars, petitioners, and migrant workers were forcibly removed from the streets of Beijing.
“Being a good corporate sponsor of the Beijing Games has sadly not meant being a good corporate citizen,” said Richardson. “The sponsors’ silence has only emboldened the Chinese government and allowed the IOC to ignore the human rights standards it claims to uphold.”

Find out more:

About human rights in China
About TOP Sponsors’ corporate social responsibility policies

Read samples of the letters from Human Rights Watch received by all TOP Sponsors:

General Electric; NBC; McDonald’s