Lakeland Mirror

Issue date: 10/4/07 Section: News

Reporters Without Borders has released this version of the Olympic rings made out of hand cuffs. Some countries have thought about boycotting the 2008 Summer Olympics due to China's human rights policies and involvement in the genocide in Darfur.

Burning, electric shock, sexual abuse, psychiatric abuse, force-feeding with human feces, savage beatings, exposure to extreme conditions, water dungeons, and forced organ harvesting; all of these are methods allegedly employed by the Chinese government in an attempt to quell the practice of Falun Gong, a religious practice that promotes truthfulness, compassion and tolerance.

China has been trying to eliminate Falun Gong, which in 1999 had an estimated 70 million practitioners in China, for more than eight years.

On August 8, 2008, tens of thousands of journalists, fans and athletes will gather in Beijing for the start of the Summer Olympic Games. A House Resolution to boycott these games was introduced by Congressman Dana Rohrbacher early last month.

Rohrbacher explained that, "The Olympics represent the noblest elements of humanity and the Chinese regime represents the opposite. The Olympic torch is supposed to be a beacon of light shining upon mankind's higher aspirations in the world and it's a travesty to have that torch hosted by a regime that is the world's worst human rights abuser."

China lost its original bid for the 2000 Olympics due to its horrific human rights violations. To procure their 2008 bid for the Olympic Games, China promised to improve human rights. This promise went unfulfilled; human rights in China have, in fact, deteriorated even more.

According to Amnesty International, China continually holds thousands of political prisoners without charge or trial and is responsible for over 80 percent of all executions documented in the world.

Reporters Without Borders, an organization dedicated to maintaining international press freedoms, feels that many of the human rights horrors happening in China are going undocumented due to strict media restrictions. They claim that at least 30 journalists and 50 Internet users are currently detained in China; some since the 1980s.

An e-mail to Reporters Without Borders elicited this response, "Sign the petitions on our website calling for the release of reporters and cyberdissidents and write to the IOC [International Olympic Committee] in Beijing to ask them to put pressure on China to meet the promises it made when awarded the Games…"

E-mails to the Mayor of Beijing and to the International Olympic Committee went unanswered.

The U.S. boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics after Soviet tanks rolled into Afghanistan in 1979.

With the Summer Olympics only one year off, only time will tell if boycotting of the Games comes to fruition.

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