It's been 14 years since Dhondup Wangchen decided to take Olympia at their word.

Dhondup Wangchen had heard that the Olympic Games would bring human rights and freedom of expression with it, as the Chinese applicants once said, and the International Olympic Committee also talked a lot about the changes that its Games would bring for China.

Christoph Becker

Sports editor.

  • Follow I follow

Back then, in autumn 2007, Dhondup Wangchen was 33 years old, one of ten children of a farming family from eastern Tibet. With a camera and a helper, he set out to ask Tibetans what they think of the Olympic Games that would take place in Beijing in the summer of 2008: monks, schoolgirls, farmers, nomads, old and young. The result is the almost 25 minutes long film “Leaving Fear Behind”. One wonders how it can be that all peoples can gather peacefully in Beijing for Olympia, but not Tibetans, although the Dalai Lama is known all over the world for peacefulness. One thinks that the Olympics are important - for the Chinese, but they are independent and free. One is annoyed by rising prices, several by fences in the pastures that are depriving nomads of their livelihoods.One monk says he would be happy about the games if China hadn't promised so much and in reality became more repressive and repressive.

The film was shown to Western diplomats in Beijing before the August 2008 Summer Games began.

Dhondup Wangchen was already in custody.

On March 26th, 2008, he was arrested by the Chinese State Security and held in a hotel room.

The torture began immediately, he testified to American MPs in Washington in 2018.

For seven days and eight nights he was forced to sit tied up in the so-called "tiger chair" without food and sleep deprived.

Six years in prison under torture

Beginning of December 2021. Again the Olympic Games in Beijing are imminent, the Winter Games in February. Dhondup Wangchen is sitting in a Frankfurt hotel and talks about his Olympic experience. “With the 2008 Games it was said: China is a country where everything is allowed. We have human rights, freedom of speech is given, let's let the games take place. I wanted to ask the people in Tibet: How do you see it? I was imprisoned under torture for six years. Bad torture. The hood was pulled over my head, I never knew where I was going, I was tied up in all limbs, pulled up, got electric shocks in my throat. "

The Chinese authorities also showed him his film in December 2008 when they wanted to know how he relates to the people who have their say in it.

It was the first time that he saw his work.

And Dhondup Wangchen noticed: The Chinese State Security also takes the IOC at its word.

“Sport and politics must not be mixed!” He is accused of while being interrogated.

This is what IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch had already propagated in the nineties when he most benevolently supported the first Chinese Olympic bid a few years after the Tiananmen massacre.