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Friday, September 28, 2007

Should the World Boycott the Beijing Olympics?

September 28, 2007 -
f digital: August 3, Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, the Ranking Member on the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights and Oversight, introduced a House Resolution to boycott the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing.

He explained, "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."

Because she practiced Falun Gong, Ms. Wei Fengju was tortured to near death in the Heizuizi Forced labor Camp. Unable to recover, she passed away on July 11, 2007.

On March 28, 2007, actress Mia Farrow, a good-will ambassador for the United Nations Children's Fund, drew the world's attention to the Beijing Olympics when she and her son Ronan wrote an op-ed article for the Wall Street Journal [1]. In the article, Farrow launched a campaign to label the 2008 Olympics the "Genocide Olympics." Her forthright candor gave voice to the world's awakening shock at Communist China's ever-burgeoning atrocities, its total disregard for human values and its severe human rights violations.

Not only is China bankrolling Darfur's Genocide [2]; for more than eight years it has sought to eliminate Falun Gong, which in 1999 had an estimated 70 million practitioners in China; it has likewise abused democracy activists, lawyers, human rights defenders, religious leaders, journalists, trade unionists, Tibetan Buddhists, Uighurs, ''unofficial'' church members, and political dissidents.

In 2004, Asma Jahangir the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions stated, "The Special Rapporteur continues to be alarmed by deaths in custody in China. Reports describe harrowing scenes in which detainees, many of whom are followers of the Falun Gong movement, die as a result of severe ill treatment, neglect or medical inattention. The cruelty and brutality of these alleged acts of torture defy description."

After the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, Manfred Nowak, completed his fact-finding mission to China he issued a press release on December 2, 2005, detailing some of the alleged torture methods the Communist regime uses on its victims. While too numerous to list, the most abhorrent include electric shock, cigarette burns, guard instructed beatings, submersion in sewage pits, exposure to heat or cold and deprivation of sleep, food or water. Nowak's 2005 report is here.

In March 2006, Nowak reported that Falun Gong practitioners accounted for 66 percent of the victims of alleged torture while in the Chinese government's custody.

When Zhang Xiaohong, 29, died after continuous torture, he weighed only 70 lbs.

The CCP is also known to subject its victims to forced brainwashing, rape while in police custody, and harvesting their organs on call, resulting in their deaths, so that their organs can be perfectly fresh for transplantations in order to make huge profits.

On March 20, 2007, in a more extensive report Nowak confirmed allegations of organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners, stating "Organ harvesting has been inflicted on a large number of unwilling Falun Gong practitioners at a wide variety of locations for the purpose of making available organs for transplant operations."

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.

All of these reports culminated, on August 3, 2007, in Congressman Rohrabacher introducing House Resolution 610 [3], aptly named because the "610 Office" in China is an extra-constitutional agency established by the former leader Jiang Zemin. It was specifically created to persecute Falun Gong and has absolute power over every level of the Communist Party and all political and judiciary systems.

Rohrabacher's H.Res. 610 expresses "the sense of the House of Representatives that the United States Government should take immediate steps to boycott the Summer Olympic Games in Beijing in August 2008 unless the Government of the People's Republic of China stops engaging in serious human rights abuses against its citizens and stops supporting serious human rights abuses by the Governments of Sudan, Burma, and North Korea against their citizens."

Rohrabacher proclaims, "In 1936, Nazi Germany hosted the Olympics giving Hitler a worldwide platform to showcase his fascist propaganda. It was wrong to support the Olympic venue then and it's wrong for the United States to support this prestigious event being held in a similarly fascist regime in 2008."

Communist China lost its bid for the 2000 Olympics because of its horrific human rights violations. Recognizing this concern, the Chinese regime explicitly promised to improve human rights [4] in order to win the 2008 Olympics Games. Its subsequent record belies its empty promise. Human rights in China have not improved; they have grievously deteriorated.

China announced "One World, One Dream" as the slogan for the 2008 Olympics. Do we really dream of a world in which freedom and China's human rights violations coexist?

We urge you to read Congressman Rohrabacher's Resolution and then contact the appropriate officials from your country. Ask them to do their part to end China's crimes against humanity.

Our dream should be a world without mind-boggling atrocities. Let us each do our small part to create that world. (more)

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