International Olympic Committee
Ch teau de Vidy
Case Postale 356
1007 Lausanne
Switzerland
6/20/01
To the International Olympic Committee:
I am very concerned about the IOC considering Beijing as the host city for the 2008 Olympic Games. I think that the Olympics theme "Celebrate Humanity" is not congruent with the gross human rights violations perpetrated by Chinese president Jiang Zemin and his government.
Despite the years of so-called opening up and reform, the Chinese government has been intensifying its persecution and human rights abuses against groups like Falun Gong, Tibetans, democracy advocates, Christian house-churches, and so on. More than 50,000 Falun Gong practitioners have been arbitrarily detained and tens of thousands more put in labor camps. Hundreds, if not thousands, have been sent to mental hospitals and destroyed with drugs, sentenced to long-term prison sentences, and even tortured to death while in police custody.
For these abuses, Amnesty International recently listed Chinese president Jiang Zemin as one of its "human rights scoundrels." CNN once reported Jiang as saying, "If we can't exterminate Falun Gong soon, this will be seen as a major weakness of the [party name omitted] Party... the authority and prestige of the Party is at stake." This to me sounds like a chilling echo of Hitler's racial policies aimed at "purifying" the Germanic "Aryan" population.
In 1936, Hitler viewed the Olympics as an opportunity to advance Nazi ideology. Sixty-five years later, Jiang Zemin wants to grab the Games to maintain his cruel dictatorship, which has lost its legitimacy in the eyes of the Chinese populace.
I am not against the Chinese people; nor am I inherently against them hosting the 2008 Olympics. However, I would hate to see history repeating itself in which Jiang Zemin uses the Games in an effort to establish the legitimacy of his actions and we will once again be presented with another tyranny's Olympics exhibit.
I hope that the IOC will take this historic opportunity to clear its record and act with courage.
Sincerely,
(Name Omitted)
Category: Opinion & Perspective
