Caijing magazine published an article by Liu Jingjing (in Chinese) about some of the guidelines Olympic volunteers have received about dealing with threats to the Olympic Games, be they explosive, infectious or journalistic.
The translation below is by Alice Xin Liu.
Watch out for drugs, bombs and journalists!
by Liu Jingjing, translated by Alice Xin Liu
Apart from biological weapons and bombing incidents, they are told to keep a lookout for journalists.
The volunteers who welcome the Olympics will see lots of interesting things.
Their attitude towards the media, we can see, and the attitude of their organizers to the media:
Some “student” volunteers who are responsible for receiving Western media gave us a very clear sign: in their eyes, journalists are no different to ‘fierce floods and savage beasts’.
Volunteers in charge of receiving foreign media have been trained with plenty of skills to face the media. For example, not taking the initiative to talk to foreign journalists: When reporters ask questions, they should say “I do not know the specific circumstances” as much as possible. When a reporter asks to take his or her picture, the volunteers should not look at the lens, because people can easily misunderstand that “volunteers are eager to have photographs taken.”
One volunteer said that in addition to biological and chemical weapons attacks and bombings, volunteers were told to guard against journalists, so they say that their job is to “prevent drugs, prevent bombs, and prevent journalists.”
The organizers demand that the volunteers treat the media like this, but of course they also have their own evaluation. It is said that at the “Good Luck Beijing” games one Western journalist asked a volunteer: “How many hours a day do you work, is it tiring?” The volunteer, whose only purpose was to honor the country, said: “10 hours, but I am not tired at all.” The result was that this conversation was used to criticize the organizers as using people in an inhumane way.
The volunteers are quite obedient. One Phoenix TV intern complained to me that volunteers are “very arrogant”. But from the point of view of the organizers and decision makers, the media is an imaginary enemy with a full body of poison, and “university student” volunteers are little children without immunity, even if they are looked at once there will be bad consequences.
Something similar can be observed at the Capital Airport where the “university student” volunteers go by the principle of “passive service.” This is a very easy principle to understand: when a foreign guest arrives, even if he has lots of bags, and is sweating a lot and confused, if he does not actively ask for help from the volunteers, the volunteers can only be “witnesses”. Even if this foreign traveler asks for help from the volunteer, the volunteers cannot help the tourist carry his/her bags, as the bags are only carried by special personnel.
“It is said that it is to prevent being wrongly accused” said one volunteer. You can understand where the organizers are coming from, if the “university student” volunteers are rushing to help everyone then there won’t be enough people to help everyone.
However, this “passive service” is akin to the government controlling product costs, as it might bring bad effects too. For example, BOCOG should tell all the foreign tourists that our volunteers are the “passive kind,” if you want to receive help, then you have to speak. Don’t expect them to come to your service automatically.
If a tourist does not know this, then there will be trouble. They will come with so much luggage, and see the blue uniformed volunteers standing straight as a pen and smiling broadly—the only thing they can’t do is move their feet to come over here, they are like an “invisible person.” It would be hard for the tourist to feel comfortable.
Isn’t this going in the opposite direction of the original intention of convening “university student” volunteers? The reality is that there have already been people who have sued the policy makers, and some volunteers have been told to “go to hell.”
Insulting people just isn’t right, and volunteers are innocent, these problems belong to certain higher mechanisms. But we don’t know how the creators of these mechanisms would explain the situation.
Because they have to suffer this kind of hurt, as well as chaos in organization, a burdensome workload and inadequate logistics, volunteers who were originally passionate, and wholeheartedly wanting to honor the country, have started to think about leaving.
At the beginning people who wanted to leave were few, but this increased dramatically during the days of the opening ceremony. The organizers became restless, and planned their own “rectification,” and said that if the volunteers quit, then this will be put on record.
We hear that during the days of the opening ceremony, when basketball star Kobe and popstars S.H.E. arrived at the Beijing airport, a group of volunteers left their stations and ran to take a picture with the stars. The result is that quite a few were sacked. We don’t know if these people’s actions were ever put on record.