Athens sends message of Olympic truce: ambassador

Musthofid and Anjaiah Veeramalah Jakarta

After more than a century since it staged the first modern Olympics in 1896, Athens is again hosting the biggest global multi-event sporting showcase at present.

Greece gave birth also to the ancient Olympics, which can be traced back to 776 BC, and Greeks see the return of the Olympics to their soil as affirmation of their place in creating the world's greatest athletic showpiece.

In an exclusive interview with The Jakarta Post recently, H.E. Alexios G. Christopoulos, the Greek ambassador to Indonesia, recollected on the creation of the Olympics and the relevance to current world events.

"During the ancient times, we believed in Greece that the ideal value for human beings was the balance between body and spirit. A healthy body creates a healthy spirit. So in promoting the spirit you also have to promote the body.

"This is the ideal way of thinking ... balance. If something is not balanced, it is always abnormal. A healthy body has to be promoted in balance with the spirit. That's the idea to make the union of athletic competition. They gave it the name Olympia," he said.

They named the competitions after a site which is a shrine to Zeus in the fertile district of Elis southwest of Athens. It was one of hundreds of sites devoted to religious festivals.

"Through competition they also managed to promote co-existence of the various states. For instance, international law was promoted through the Olympic Games.

"Two months before and after the Games, the states which were members of the Olympic Games -- in the case of having conflicts or wars with each other -- were obliged to cease fire.

"And during the ceasefire, all the citizens of the warring states were able to go through each other's enemy territories to reach the Olympic Games and come back unscathed.

"No one should touch them. It was obligatory. Whoever touched them was considered to be in violation of the law and would be punished with the rest of the Olympic members declaring a war against them.

"This is what we call the Olympic truce and promoted in this Olympic Games," he said.

The International Olympic Committee revived the concept of the Olympic truce in 1992, and the General Assembly, since 1993, has unanimously adopted a resolution every two years reiterating support for the temporary truce.

The 191-nation assembly adopted the most recent truce resolution in November.

"And Indonesia has given its support to the resolution," Christopoulos said.

The Olympic Games, which began on Aug. 13 and will run until Sunday night's closing ceremony, is host to more than 10,000 athletes from 202 countries competing in 28 sports.

Given the current political landscape in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, the organizing committee of the Athens Games has put a high priority on and billions of dollars into security measures.

"The (security costs) are three times more than Sydney (for the 2000 Olympics)," said Christopoulos.

The Games attract not only sports fans, but also a number of high-profile figures from different countries including former U.S. president George Bush Sr., who came to lend moral support to the American athletes, and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Christopoulos hoped the Games' participants, and the world, would be able to understand the message of the Games.

"There are many members of the governments of warring states. They are spectators together in the Olympic Games and they have to cooperate as advocated in the message of the Games (Olympic oath)," he said.

"So through this obligatory cooperation, there may come a solution to the conflicts. That's the message...They have to find ways of co-existence," he said.

The Olympic truce that the Athens Games is seeking to send to the world is symbolized in the olive wreaths which are awarded to gold medalists.

The presentation of olive wreaths as symbol of peace and honor, as Christopoulos said, was a the tradition that had begun since the ancient Olympics.

"An interesting aspect during the ancient Olympics was that the prizes for the winners were not expensive. It was just an olive branch that could be find everywhere in Olympia and all over the region.

"They cut the branches and put them on the heads of the winners ... and this was the greatest honor.

"The message is that the honor is not of material or financial value.

He said winners received only an olive wreath in Olympia itself, but adulation awaited them in their homes as a reward for the glory they bestowed upon it.

"The victors always got the best seat at public meetings. Even in the same states the victors had the same honor when they visited each other's states. That was the common value. The same for women.

"This is the idea we are looking to promote through the Olympic Games. We need material or financial (source) to spend on, like, constructing facilities, security measures and so on, but you have never forget that the spirit is the highest value that we should promote a lot."