Spielberg Drops Out as Adviser to Beijing Olympics in Dispute Over Darfur Conflict

WASHINGTON, Feb. 13th. (NY Times) - Steven Spielberg said Tuesday that he was withdrawing as an artistic adviser to the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, after almost a year of trying unsuccessfully to prod President Hu Jintao of China to do more to try to end Sudan’s attacks in the darfur region. Mr. Spielberg’s decision, and the public way he announced it, is a blow to China, which has said that its relationship with Sudan should not be linked to the Olympics, which have become a source of national pride. “Sudan’s government bears the bulk of the responsibility for these ongoing crimes but the international community, and particularly China, should be doing more to end the continuing human suffering there,” the statement said. “China’s economic, military and diplomatic ties to the government of Sudan continue to provide it with the opportunity and obligation to press for change.” Responding to Mr. Spielberg’s action, a spokesman at the Chinese Embassy in Washington said, “As the Darfur issue is neither an internal issue of China nor is it caused by China, it is completely unreasonable, irresponsible and unfair to link the two as one.” Mr. Spielberg had written to Mr. Hu about Darfur twice in the past 10 months, his spokesman said, taking China to task for its “silence” while Sudan blocked the deployment of international peacekeepers and expelled aid workers from the region.

In September, Mr. Spielberg also met with China’s special envoy to Darfur at the Chinese mission to the United Nations, said Mr. Spielberg’s spokesman, Andy Spahn. None of those efforts yielded the results Mr. Spielberg wanted, Mr. Spahn said. In the meantime, Mr. Spielberg had come under increasing pressure from advocates working on Darfur, including a campaign by the actress mia Farrow, to drop his association with the Beijing Olympics. After receiving word that Mr. Spielberg had done just that, Ms. Farrow was jubilant. “His voice and all of the moral authority it gives, used this way, brings a shred of hope to Darfur, and God knows, rations of hope are meager at this time,” said Ms. Farrow, a good-will ambassador for the Unicef who helped start a campaign last year to label the Games in Beijing the “Genocide Olympics.” The actor Don Cheadle, a co-founder of Not On Our Watch, a Darfur advocacy group, said he hoped that Mr. Spielberg’s actions would force China to rethink its position. “One guy like Steven in a position like that is like 100 other guys,” he said. “Those are the kinds of moves, that if they catch fire, and other people think of boycotting, or refraining, the cumulative effect could be something that potentially could change the calculation of that government.”

Mr. Spahn said Mr. Spielberg planned to encourage others to do more to pressure China on Darfur, but he did not offer details. Advocates said they hoped to enlist help from corporate sponsors of the Olympics. China has fought attempts to link Darfur to the Olympics, but it has also responded at times to the pressure. Last year, shortly after Mr. Spielberg’s first letter to Mr. Hu, China dispatched a senior official to Sudan to push the government to accept a peacekeeping force and appointed a special envoy. But the Sudanese military has continued its attacks there, as recently as last week.
By Helene Cooper. David M. Halbfinger contributed reporting from Los Angeles.
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