Posted on 08/09/2008 11:36:41 AM PDT by NYer
Had the National Population and Family Planning Commission not rescinded its invitation, I would be in China right now as the Olympics opened. But the Commission, which is responsible for enforcing the one-child policy, belatedly realized that I was a well-known critic of that policy--and of that country's human rights record in general-- and barred the door.
I confess to not having been overly disappointed by their decision. Despite the fact that I read, write and speak Chinese, it would have been nearly impossible for me to do anything else in Beijing but the one thing that I will not do: attend the Games. For reasons that I will explain below, I have decided to boycott them from start to finish.
It is true that I would have welcomed the opportunity to visit my friends in Beijing, but I wouldn't have felt free to do this for fear of getting them in trouble.
China's capital, you see, has been turned into an armed camp. Plainclothes policemen are everywhere and, even if I managed to avoid human spies, the more than 30,000 surveillance cameras that have been have been installed throughout the city in recent months would have tracked my movements anyway.
For some time now, I haven't even dared to communicate with my friends by e-mail or phone, because I knew that all communications into or out of China are being monitored.
As far as China's pro-democracy activists are concerned, it wouldn't be possible for me to see them either. They, along with anyone else who has been labeled a "troublemaker," have been hustled off to the countryside, or placed under house arrest. Their homes are guarded by phalanxes of police. Their mail, phone and computers are monitored.
What if I simply took a stroll in the streets of Beijing and struck up conversations with passersby? You may be surprised to learn that even this could be risky for those I happened to speak with. Plainclothes policemen would be tailing me, attempting to listen in to anything I said.
If my newfound friends were so careless as to utter any criticism of the government, they might well find themselves charged with "inciting subversion of state power" or "illegal possession of state secrets," or some similar charge. As hard as it may be for Americans to understand, such thuggish behavior is par for the course in the People's Republic.
By now, everyone has seen pictures of the beautiful new stadiums that have been built by the Beijing regime. What you won't see are the military camps on the outskirts of Beijing, where units of the People's Armed Police armed with tanks and armored personnel carriers have been placed on high alert.
But local observers say that the police and military presence is even greater than that of June 1989, when deadly force was used to put down the pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square and a massacre ensued.
The regime is so paranoid of disturbances during the Olympics that it has placed the entire military of the country on stand-by. Not only army, but air force and even naval units, are standing by to put down demonstrations (although it is unclear what role the air force and naval units could play in putting down peaceful demonstrations).
Visitors to Beijing this time around will in all likelihood be spared the sight of tanks crushing unarmed demonstrators and soldiers machine gunning protestors, but they should know that, behind the clean and orderly facade, human rights abuses still proliferate.
The streets of Beijing are quiet, but it is the quiet of the graveyard. Not only has the Chinese government broken its promises to improve its human rights record prior to the 2008 Olympics, the Games themselves have led this oppressive regime to crack down on dissent on a scale unprecedented since the brutal Cultural Revolution. The Beijing Olympics are becoming a byword for Beijing's brutality.
The Chinese government holds thousands of political prisoners without charge or trial. These include democracy activists, lawyers, human rights defenders, religious leaders, journalists, trade unionists, Tibetan Buddhists, Uyghurs, ''unofficial'' church members, members of the "underground" Catholic Church, women pregnant with "illegal" children, Falun Gong practitioners, and political dissidents.
Name a human right, and Beijing is violating it, probably on a massive scale.
We at PRI have held a series of conferences on the human rights situation in China. Our chief problem is finding enough time for all the various groups whose rights have been violated to tell their story.
Overseas, the Chinese government supports regimes that, like it, have no respect for human dignity. Name a brutal dictatorship, and the odds are that its chief international patron and arms supplier is the People's Republic of China.
Beijing has long-standing economic and military ties with Sudan and continues to strengthen these ties, including providing military assistance, in spite of the ongoing human rights abuses amounting to genocide in Darfur. It has close ties to the Burmese military junta, which continues to brutalize its Christian minority, hold Nobel Peace Prize winner Daw Aung Saan Suu Kyi under house arrest, and mistreat the recent typhoon victims.
Beijing even supports North Korea's Kim Jong-il, providing the food and fuel that helps him to remain in power. Because of the ongoing famine and political repression in that country, tens of thousands of North Koreans have fled across the border to China in recent years.
The Chinese authorities surely know that these pitiful refugees face arbitrary detention, torture, and even summary execution if they are caught. They arrest and deport them back to North Korea anyway.
Tragically, the decision to allow Beijing to host the 2008 Olympics has led directly to more human rights abuses.
An estimated two million residents of Beijing have been rendered homeless, their homes destroyed to make way for various Olympic venues. As the Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) has reported, the Beijing regime has locked up a large number of "Olympics Prisoners." The cases of Yang Chunlin and Ye Guozhu are typical.
Ye Guozhu was scheduled to be released on July 26 after four years in prison for attempting to organize a protest against forced evictions due to the Games. Only a few days prior to his release, however, the authorities accused him of "gathering crowds to disturb the order of public places," and extended his sentence indefinitely. (The authorities did not deign to explain how he could have "gathered crowds" while in prison.)
Yuan Xianchen, a legal activist from Heilongjiang Province who helped Yang Chunlin to collect signatures endorsing the open letter, "We Want Human Rights, Not the Olympics" was arrested on May 28 on suspicion of "inciting subversion of state power".
The PRC regularly denies rights that peoples in other countries take for granted, namely, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of association, but the controls have tightened even further in the run up to the Games.
The censorship of the Internet in particular has reached dimensions of paranoia rarely seen even in one-party dictatorships. Overseas web sites that are considered to be "politically sensitive" or "anti-China" are blocked, including those of CHRD mentioned above.
Popular Internet forums have been shut down, or even more heavily censored.
It is for these reasons that I, along with many others, will be boycotting the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Like the XI Olympiad held in Adolf Hitler's Berlin in 1936, I believe that the Beijing Olympics contravenes both the history and the spirit of the Olympic Games.
I have signed the petition at www.beijingboycottcoalition.com pledging not to view broadcasts of the events, or will patronize any of the Games sponsors.
Instead, I will be praying for the people of China, and particularly for our brothers and sisters in the persecuted Underground Catholic Church.
Catholic Ping List
Please freepmail me if you want on/off this list
We need a list of the sponsors posted, to be able to effectively mount a decent boycott.
Would you be so kind as to repost your graphic on this thread as well. Many thanks!
Good luck with your boycott. I’m watching beach volleyball and enjoying every minute of it.
China is not the only nation competing in the games: there are plenty of good democrats at whom you may awe. As a student of ancient Greek history, the ongoing politicization of the Olympics saddens me. Let us celebrate peaceful competition and the beauty of the human body in motion.
Good luck with your boycott. I’m watching beach volleyball and enjoying every minute of it.
The only thing I want to watch is the weightlifting but it’s on PMSNBC and I don’t get it.
Then don't. Or, like vegetarians, do you think crowing about your decision some how makes you more virtuous than the rest of us?
I saw womens weightlifting this morning. Kind of freakish seeing these little bitty girls with necks like linebackers and faces like bulldogs.
Ditto.
I’m watching the sports I like. Like Michael Phelps swimming now. If a stupid sport is on, I’ll watch the PGA Championship. I’ll skip the opening/closing ceremonies and other fluff.
I simply am not watching the Olympics because it is pointless no matter where it is held.
Half the so called amatuer atheletes are either professional or subsidized by their governments the other half are drugged up.
The contests are rigged and the judging is fixed.
So as I said pretty much pointless..........
I was going to watch the Tibetan 7.62X39 relay race but they decided to black out coverage of it. You probably wouldn’t like it anyway because the object is to see how fast body motion can be stopped.
Social and Government morality has nothing much to add to what the real problems are.
As for population controls, I find most American religious views to be highly hypocritical, knowing what we do on a voluntary basis to avoid children of any sex.
It just makes no difference when you consider the results and the quickly aging populations of Western society.
From China's point of view, we are the hypocrites, and not them, and I could easily coclude that they are probably right on this one point.
Social and Government morality has nothing much to add to what the real problems are.
As for population controls, I find most American religious views to be highly hypocritical, knowing what we do on a voluntary basis to avoid children of any sex.
It just makes no difference when you consider the results and the quickly aging populations of Western society.
From China's point of view, we are the hypocrites, and not them, and I could easily conclude that they are probably right on this one point.
One wonders, in a spirit of constructive engagement, would Bush have also attended the '36 Olympics in Berlin?
One wonders, in a spirit of constructive engagement, would Bush have also attended the '36 Olympics in Berlin?
Amen! Let us not all become Jimmy Carters. The decision was made to hold the games in China. It is and was a bad decision. So be it. Why put the athletes in the middle of our political arguments. Enjoy the games! Go USA!
Does “Mega-dittoes” mean you post stuff twice all the time?
Funny I thought the olympics was about our athletes? And supporting them. My cousin is on the womens softball team (Jessica Mendoza) she is a bleeding heart liberal who did not want to go to China. But at the end by winning the gold it proves our way is the best way. You dont want to watch? Fine but we don’t need to know your stupid reasons.
Show them we are right by cleaning up on medals
If one chose to boycott the Olympics every time a hosting country failed to meet our expectations, accepted standards or beliefs, one would never see an Olympic game. I had mixed feelings about watching the Olympics because it was being held in China, but then I realized I would miss the wonderful performances by our athletes who had trained for years for this one moment in their lives.
My husband and I have gone back and forth on this. He refuses to watch any of it. I caught some of the opening ceremonies last night. It’s a tough one, I want to support our athletes yet I cannot support the Chinese government.
One thing I noticed last night, when the Americans came in there was a noticeable roar from the crowd. The Chinese citizens are the victims of this government. Maybe with these games and with the contact with people from all over the world, the Chinese people will have a renewed push for a freer society. Change will have to come from within.
As anyone who knows me on FR, I am not a religious man, but I will not watch one minute of this greatest of all propaganda pieces.
I will not watch them at all. The article about killing babies in orphaniages was all I needed.
And now we have tapped taxi cabs and stabbings. Let alone the persecution of the REAL Catholic Church in China!
No thank you.
After loudly proclaiming for a week I wasn’t going to watch any of it I relented and viewed the OC after hearing it was a once in a lifetime experience and state of the art with little or no specific content that was objectionable. It was and so I had one mostly enjoyable evening last week out of several not so pleasant ones (my own problem about the others; I’m too much of a worry wart about everything).
But I felt contempt every time the Chinese president appeared on the screen and especially during his arrogant speech. I was greatly reminded of the abortions and infanticides and denied conceptions, not to mention the persecution of true Catholics.
So it is fair to say that although I enjoyed the performance, my resolve against the Chinese Communists is hardened and invigorated. That is probably the best combination.
I was surprised by the soldiers...but a $350 million opening ceremonies probably is going to come around again.
Protestants are also being persecuted. How about just praying for the Chinese Underground Church? At least that's how I put it in our church's prayer list.
I’m not watching it. I really can’t believe that China was chosen for the games. It’s outrageous, and wrong.
I’m trying not to watch them for all the reasons posted. My in-laws are visiting and are TV/Olympic addicts, though. I’m not a big sports person anyway and don’t care that people spend half their lives training for one moment. One medal. It seems kind of like a waste of time to me. But again, I’m not a big sports person. I realize I am in the minority here! I just don’t care about the Olympics. It’s all sob stories, snippets of different competitions and non-stop blathering through the whole thing. It drives me nuts!
I saw womens weightlifting this morning. Kind of freakish seeing these little bitty girls with necks like linebackers and faces like bulldogs.
There are some who still look like women because they’re not into the “pharmacological upgrade”. Actually,I like the mens session’s better because I recognize the lifters and the amount of weight on the bar.I like to watch the hammer throw,too, but good luck trying to find the coverage of that.
yeah, that was pretty nice.
They moved all of the road-side dogmeat stands outside the city limits.
Naturally, we cheer on and support our athletes competing in the Olympics but remember that there is more to life ... much more ... than winning sports medals that result in media advertising contracts. As the author has noted, carefully hidden behind the scenes are those devout and faithful christians who are now under house arrest or in prison. What about the families who lost EVERYTHING in the earthquake! The government has invested billions of $s in these games and left the homeless to fend for themselves on the street.
We need to remind ourselves, should we choose to watch any of this coverage, that we are being fed Communist propaganda about the China "they" wish us to see. It in no way resembles the real China.
Prayers for the oppressed Catholics and christians, struggling to exist in a homeland that denies them their rights to religious freedom.
I did see the drums (I thought their smiles were a bit creepy) and the giant footprints “walking” across the city. It really was amazing. They were on again this evening for the in-laws. I was hanging out in the other room. When I walked through I saw my kids watching the women’s volleyball team wearing uniforms that couldn’t have been much smaller. The material from the entire team wouldn’t make a decent skirt for me to wear to church. I grabbed the kids and read books to them instead until bedtime.
That was very interesting! Thank you!
We need to remind ourselves, should we choose to watch any of this coverage, that we are being fed Communist propaganda about the China "they" wish us to see. It in no way resembles the real China.
Well said, all, the above in particular.
Take it from me.
First hand.
I caught that. Any explanations as to how this happened? What is the 'official' explantion being given by the Communists?
I had no idea!
And, what about Google? They must have a powerful connection with the Chinese gov't in pre-screening web sites for censorship. How else could they have earned the privilege of posting the Olympic images as part of their logo.
I can't get into the games either. The basic idea behind it all is sort of lost when these games are held in a communist state that neither has any real democratic principals nor any concept of human rights. These games are sort of like the games held in Munich when some other despot in the 30s also wanted to boost the image of his regime with these games. It's sad when the Olympics become a cheap whore by which regimes like the one in China elevate their world standing and when the Olympic commission allows this.
It's a great analogy and spot on in my opinion.
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