MuseumDESCRIPTION:
Olympic Gold winning speed skater Joey Cheek talks about why he believes the Olympic Games are more than a sporting event.
TRANSCRIPT:
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: This is Bridget Conley-Zilkic. With me today is Joey Cheek who is an Olympic gold speed skater. He won gold in Turin in 2006 and since that time has become also the co-founder of Team Darfur with water polo player, Brad Greiner. Joey, thank you for speaking with me today.
JOEY CHEEK: Thanks for having me.
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: You spoke with my colleague, Jerry Fowler, in April of 2006 about how you seized the opportunity of the press that you received upon winning the gold medal to become an activist for Darfur. Today, we want to talk a little bit about what you’ve been doing in that time since, and more recently, some of the work that you’ve been doing around the Beijing Olympics. So can you tell us a little bit about what Team Darfur is, and what you’re working on?
JOEY CHEEK: About a year ago after I’d been traveling and speaking about Darfur, and really trying to advocate for more protection for civilians there, and trying to raise awareness, the Olympic spotlight begins to dim a bit, as it should. But my effectiveness, I felt, was beginning to become diminished. So what I hoped to do, what Brad and I both had the vision to try and pull together, was the idea that we should engage other athletes because we figured there must be others out there who are interested. We wanted to pull them together and say, “Look, we’ve got a whole coalition of athletes now who are focused on the people of Darfur and how to help them,” and to try and find ways to engage the international community. And that was really the idea for Team Darfur.
Today, we have more than 400 athletes from more than 63, 64, something like that, countries around the world. And we have 73 that are competing in Beijing at the 2008 Olympics. So our mission was to try and find other athletes that would speak about this issue and that would use their Olympic spotlight, or their athletic spotlight, to try and highlight some of the severe problems that people are facing there.
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: What are some of the things that you’ve been doing with this coalition of athletes?
JOEY CHEEK: Well, we’ve been around for not that long, only 10 or 11 months, but we’ve got a number of different initiatives. We’ve got a project where athletes would raise money for schools that are being built in Darfur, to try and purchase books for, you know, students there. We’ve done a number of press and speaking engagements, and we’ve had athletes travel to rallies to speak about the Darfur crisis and the role of the international community. We’ve had athletes even travel to Switzerland to meet with the International Olympic Committee to try and talk about ways to engage the international community, the Olympic ideas to try and help the people of Darfur.
Most recently going into the Beijing Olympics, we were really pushing the idea of an Olympic truce for Darfur. The Olympic truce is tightly tied in with Olympic history but it’s not widely spoken about. It’s a period of truce that is supposed to be observed a week before the start of the games until the week after the Paralympics games close, to really speak about the ways in which the Olympic games can stand as a brief source of conflict resolution, provide a brief respite from violence. We hope that during that time, the international community could really try and tie some concrete goals to Darfur, and that during the Olympic truce period, it would be observed, we had hoped during the Olympic games in the region, and we could spend that time to try and get more humanitarian aid, to try and restart diplomatic processes, or try and increase the deployment of UN forces in the region. So that was our hope.
We had hoped to really appeal to all of the great things about the Olympics. Unfortunately, it hasn’t come to fruition as we had hoped, and of course as we get closer to the games, I had my incident where I was set to travel and less than 24 hours where I was to travel, the Chinese government called and said they were revoking my Visa.
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: Was there any argument for why they had revoked it?
JOEY CHEEK: No, there wasn’t. In fact, the official on the phone said that they are not required to give any reason and really wouldn’t bend to my questions. The foreign minister released a statement two days later that they’re a sovereign nation and not required to admit anyone that they didn’t feel they wanted in. Which is a funny way to phrase something. At no point did I ever question their sovereignty or, you know, it’s funny, it makes it sound like I’m an invasion force.
My mission and my goals, the reason I came to this whole idea of wanting to help out and wanting to use my Olympic spotlight to do other things comes from my experience at the Olympics, and my belief, and my passion really for what the Olympics stand for in my mind, is the idea that we are more than a sporting event. We’re an event that is created to bring people together. I came to this through the Olympic ideals. I still believe passionately and fervently that the Olympics are a great force for good and bringing people together, but unfortunately I was considered some sort of a threat for the Olympics.
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: What would you have done had you gone to Beijing?
JOEY CHEEK: I was going for two reasons. One was, you know, as Co-Founder and President of Team Darfur, I wanted to support the 73 athletes that we have competing there in whatever form that may take. The other way I had hoped to try and participate was, as an Olympic alumnus there are a number of panel discussions, and opportunities to speak with media, and opportunities to meet with UN officials and IOC officials. I’d hoped to try and find constructive ways and to be able to speak more about the Olympics and conflict resolution.
Obviously, if I was asked, I would certainly speak about China’s connection to Sudan and how I think that they have more leverage than anyone else in the international community. I believe that to be a fact and I think you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who disagrees with me. I think that’s a fair thing to be able to speak about. However, it certainly appears to me that in addition to the crisis in Darfur -- and to the role that China could play, but I think is not playing -- I think we’ve seen some real issues of freedom of speech in this Olympics as well.
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: Have you spoken with or is Lopez Lomong, who is a Sudanese refugee who found safe haven in the U.S. and carried the U.S. flag at the beginning of the march of athletes into the stadium, is he part of Team Darfur?
JOEY CHEEK: He is and in a recent interview he was quoted as saying that, , he lived through what the people in Darfur are living through and that’s why he wanted to join Team Darfur. Just his example alone is such a spectacular example of one, all of the great things that I’ve always believed about the U.S. Olympic team, because he was selected. People sometimes don’t realize, but the way he is selected as flag bearer is the captains of each sport get together and decide who they want to represent the United States. They picked Lopez out of every athlete competing, to be the flag bearer for the United States. So one, the U.S. athletes looked at him and decided that no one represents the ideals of America better.
And then, two, I think that represents the great ideals of the Olympics. I mean, here’s a guy who not long ago was in refugee camps. He had been kidnapped. He had escaped. He had been part of the lost boys. What a fantastic example and showcase for all of the great things about the Olympics. However, it’s kind of funny because on the one hand, he is touted by everyone as an example of the great things about the U.S. and the Olympics, and on the other hand it’s sad that athletes who are part of a group, that want to talk about a crisis that is happening in the same country he is from, that goes against the Olympic spirit. And to me, that really doesn’t jive.
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: And what’s the future beyond the Beijing Olympics for Team Darfur and for you personally?
JOEY CHEEK: Well, for Team Darfur we’re really looking at our options right now, after these games have come and gone. We’ve had several athletes who have expressed interest in talking about the crisis and doing more work, and becoming more engaged as their Olympic careers or this particular games are finished and they have more time to be able to speak out. We think we’ll have a lot of athletes that will be willing to speak to media and hopefully travel. I know we’ve heard from several athletes that wanted to actually go into the region. We’d love to be able to take them and take media that would otherwise not cover this issue. And really show the world that, we know we’ve heard about this on the news. We know it’s bad but it’s still happening and we can’t stop fighting for these people until there’s been resolution and they’re protected.
Sometimes, it’s frustrating the pace of international diplomacy. But if people were not fighting vehemently for these people then surely many more would have been killed already. It’s worth standing up and fighting for.
As for me personally, I still have three more years of school. So between figuring out how we’re going to keep Darfur going and all of the challenges that are faced with this conflict, I also got to figure out a way to pass multi-variable calculus. I think that’s at least as equally difficult a task.
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: It would be for me as well. And I’ll just briefly, it was amazing as you watch the games and you see all these stunning people from almost every country in the world showing the most extraordinary feats that the human body can undertake, and these incredible triumphs. It’s quite sobering to remember the incredible tragedy that humans also have to face around the world at the same time. And I think all of us who work on these issues are humbled that people have taken a moment of the limelight to draw attention to what’s going on with the tragedies around the world. So I’d like to thank you for the inspiring commitment that you’ve made?
JOEY CHEEK: Well, thank you. I appreciate it, but it’s been pretty easy for me and I’m consistently, I feel the same way about all the athletes that are competing in these games. I’m always awed and amazed at the depths of their understanding and compassion for people of the world, but also their athletic ability. I’m a huge Olympics fan and a fan of Olympians as well. So I’m thrilled that I get to work with people like I do every day.
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: Thank you for taking the time to speak with me today.
JOEY CHEEK: Thanks for having me.
NARRATOR: You have been listening to Voices on Genocide Prevention, from United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. To learn more about preventing genocide, join us online at www.ushmm.org/conscience. There you’ll also find the Voices on Genocide Prevention weblog.
