The games with blinkers and bloodied hands

In the lobby of Mexico City's Camino Real hotel, a garish building of pink patios and yellow concrete reminiscent of the Elephant and Castle, old friends have been greeting each other this week as they arrive for the 114th congress of the International Olympic Committee, which starts today.

Sitting in the bar where a female duo perform Chris de Burgh and Kylie covers, a few of the older IOC members will doubtless have gathered over a bottle of tequila to recall the last occasion they were in this hotel, which was built for the Olympics here in 1968.

Reyes Contreras was not invited and, anyway, it is unlikely the IOC members would have wanted to hear his memories. He was part of the peaceful student demonstration numbering between 5,000 and 10,000 in the downtown Tlatelolco Plaza on October 2, 1968, protesting at how much the games were costing at a time when Mexico was in the grip of severe poverty.

Avery Brundage, then president of the IOC, had warned the Mexican president, Gustavo Diaz Ordaz, that if demonstrations took place at the Olympic site the games would be cancelled. So, 10 days before they were due to be opened, Diaz Ordaz ordered in the military to solve the problem.

The heavily armed troops and police encircled the pro testers. To this day no one is certain how many people were killed in the ensuing massacre. The government claimed 24 people died but many described a blood bath and most historians say about 300 students were killed, caught in crossfire while the authorities blocked the exits.

Diaz Ordaz accused students of instigating the violence. Successive governments backed the claim and denied reports by witnesses that paramilitary forces, hired to provide security for the games, had been involved.

The massacre scared a generation of Mexicans and convinced thousands that peaceful protest was impossible, driving them into small rebel groups. The full truth has never come out; the traces were hastily cleaned away and not until 1993 were Mexican school books permitted to refer to it.

Even today, 34 years on, it is high on Mexico's political agenda. In February the country's attorney general opened an investigation into the massacre, responding to a supreme court order which ruled that a study must take place even though the statute of limitations has expired.

It would have been a touching gesture if the IOC president Jacques Rogge had decided to visit and lay a wreath at the site of the monument to the victims while he was here but the IOC's inability to take responsibility for anything that goes wrong related to the games is well documented. So the occasion will remain unmarked.

Worryingly, Rogge is already turning a similar blind eye to what is happening in Beijing, where the games of 2008 will mark the 40th anniversary of the Mexican massacre. The Belgian surgeon told the BBC television show Hard Talk in April that IOC members had considered China's human rights record before they awarded the event to Beijing last summer. "The IOC will make sure within its own sphere that human rights are totally respected," Rogge said.

But, when members of the Free Tibet Campaign visited Rogge at his office in Lausanne a month ago to complain about continuing human rights abuses, they found the stance he adopted in private to be much tougher. They said they found him aggressive and antagonistic as he claimed it was not his organisation's job to be a "human rights watchdog" and expressed every confidence in the Chinese authorities to put on an excellent games.

No one doubts that the event will be among the best organised in the history of the Olympic movement and will be held up as a shining example of the progress China has made since the end of the Cultural Revolution, even if that means punishing free speech with prison sentences and in severe cases death, ruthlessly suppressing political opposition, displaying no religious tolerance and quelling dissent wherever the government finds it.

Just as they were in Mexico City all those years ago, the athletes will be more concerned about winning medals than the rights of the local population. The Olympic sponsors will diligently work to maximise their profits by exploiting the games to the full and will have no time for such trifling issues.

The obsessive spirit of winning and flaunting superiority that has long characterised the Olympics will again stifle faint cries for freedom and equality. The Mexican students in 1968 were powerless against the international hysteria over a sporting event that lasts only 17 days. It would be a major scar on Rogge's record if he were to allow history to repeat itself in Beijing.