Last updated 11:24, Thursday, 20 March 2008

ANYONE travelling to Beijing for the Olympic Games later this year will see the China that the Chinese authorities want them to see.

But those who think that politics and sport can be kept apart are living in cloud cuckoo land.

Because China is a burgeoning economic entity, people conveniently forget about their appalling human rights record.

The Chinese have shown their true colours during the crackdown in Tibet where estimates of the number of protestors killed vary from a few dozen to hundreds.

And what about the people who have been seized by the Chinese authorities? I don’t suppose they are being given five star hotels and breakfast.

Now the Chinese are blaming the peace-loving spiritual leader the Dalai Lama for instigating the violence, which all but the blind can see is preposterous.

Sports fans who visit China for the Olympics will be tacitly sanctioning a government that may outwardly smile at its visitors, but inwardly remains as inscrutably cruel as ever.

Of course they will close their eyes to the issue and trot out the usual platitudes about sport rising above politics.

But that’s a convenient hiding of the truth that lurks behind the mask.