WHY WERE THE 2008 OLYMPIC GAMES AWARDED TO THE WORLD’S LEADER IN HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS?
by David Sisler
It’s all about money.
The games of the 28th Olympiad are over, and the next go-round has been sold to Communist China.
As Communist China’s athletes celebrate their 32 gold medals, the government of Beijing is planning on reaping some real gold at the 2008 Olympic Games.
International communication experts say that by the 2008 Games, Communist China will be the world’s second-largest advertising market. Communist China represents a potential 1.3 billion-person consumer market.
It really is all about money, and money has controlled American policy toward Communist China for decades. The fear from the West is, if “we” don’t cash in, someone else will.
Hoping to cash in on the Olympic furor generated in Athens, McDonald’s, an international Olympics sponsor, launched a spot featuring Chinese gymnasts eating the chain’s “Gold Medal selection.” Not to be left out, Pepsi has a spot which features the trio of athletes who won Communist China’s first gold medal in 1984, “pushing their athletic limits in challenges lined with Pepsi cans.” Nike and China Mobile Communications Corp are jumping in, says Geoffrey A. Fowler, staff reporter of The Wall Street Journal, and that is, as they say, just the tip of the old iceberg.
Olympic organizers say that the important thing in the Olympic Games is not the winning, but merely taking part. In the face of such idealism, the International Olympic Committee has made a horrible mistake in awarding the 2008 Games to Communist China.
In Communist China merely taking part is not official government policy. Winning is all, and a win in Beijing means their way or the way to the firing squad.
To award the 2008 Games to Communist China is to give approval to their national policy. To even allow their athletes to compete in any international competition, while murder and torture remain official government policy, is a slap in the face of world freedom and human rights.
No nation on the face of the earth has a more deplorable record of human rights violations than does Communist China.
From Amnesty International comes the story of Zhuo Xiaojun.
Zhuo was arrested in December 1989 and sentenced to death in a case that a provincial high court later overturned. A retrial began four years later but was adjourned for seven years while an unexplained “supplementary investigation” was undertaken. Zhou remained in jail throughout.
A new trial in January 2000 lasted only a few hours and, after a half hour adjournment for deliberation, Zhuo Xiaojun was again sentenced to death.
He alleges that his confession was extracted through torture. Legal officials reported seeing Zhuo suspended from a door during beatings, and remarked on his wounds, the scars of which reportedly remain visible years later.
Rebiya Kadeer was found guilty in March 2000 of “providing secret information to foreigners” and was sentenced to eight years in prison. The information which she disseminated was found in a public Chinese newspaper.
In July 2002, Li Dawei, a former police officer, was sentenced to 11 years imprisonment on charges of “subversion” for e-mailing overseas “reactionaries.”
Although the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China guarantees freedom of association and assembly, Chinese citizens who advocate human rights are routinely sentenced by courts to terms of between 15 and 20 years’ imprisonment.
The Communist government of Beijing prohibits all religious activities outside officially recognized religions (Christianity is one of four). Being “officially recognized” is no protection as Protestants who worship in house churches, are arrested, detained, placed under close police surveillance or internal exile, fined, tortured, and murdered.
The Constitution of Communist China mandates the duty of couples to practice family planning. Since 1979, the central government has attempted to implement a family planning policy “intended to control population quantity and improve its quality.” Central to this initiative is the “one child per couple” policy. Implementation of the law is left to local regulations, which means that forced abortions are practiced in some provinces.
Elsewhere “incentives” such as medical, educational and housing benefits are used. Punishments including fines, confiscation of property, salary cuts and loss of jobs. Officials also may refuse to issue residence cards to “out of plan” children, thereby denying them education and other state benefits.
Communist Chinese officials have boasted about preventing 300 million births since the policy was implemented, a national policy frequently praised by Western family planning supporters.
The one-child policy, in conjunction with the traditional preference for male children, has led to a resurgence of practices like female infanticide, concealment of female births, and abandonment or abortion of female infants.
An institutional editorial in The Wall Street Journal on August 17, 2004, noted that, “China’s one-child policy has had many odious dimensions, but the most gruesome aspect of this type of ‘family planning’ has been the annual murder of tens of millions of infant girls.” (emphasis is mine).
In the face of all of this, the IOC awarded the 2008 Olympic Games to Beijing. In the face of all of this, America is poised to send a team to Beijing. In the face of all of this, world-wide television broadcast rights will be sold for millions, or billions, of dollars. In the face of all of this, advertisers will pay exhorbitant fees to position their ads during prime Olympic moments. In the face of all this, the Communist government of China has been awarded a global stage for a select few of its citizens who excel in athletic prowess, while the vast majority of Chinese citizens live in constant fear of repression, reprisal and death.
It’s all about money. If we don’t, someone else will.
It is all about money. And it is time someone says, “I am not for sale!” It is time the bully that is Beijing is held accountable by the rest of the world. Taking the 2008 Olympic Games from them and banning their athletes from competition would be only a start. But somewhere there must be a start.
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Copyright 2004 by David Sisler. All Rights Reserved.
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