European Parliament Expresses Opposition to the Holding of the Olympic Games in Beijing

Strasbourg, 5 July 2001. The European Parliament today adopted, by a large majority, a resolution in which it states that China's disastrous record on human rights makes Beijing an unsuitable venue for the 2008 Olympic Games.

Statement by Olivier Dupuis, Secretary of the Transnational Radical Party and member of the European Parliament:

"The new wave of prison sentences for dissidents, Chinese Democratic Party activists, trade unionists and thousands of members of the Falun Gong movement, the new wave of death penalties and executions, the destruction of Tibet, Oughuristan and Southern Mongolia, and the large-scale violation of the fundamental rights of the inhabitants of these countries, the widespread use of torture and 'suicide' as a means of repression, the traffic of human organs... are all concrete facts that make the organisation of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing inopportune, to say the least. I hope that the International Olympic Committee will recall the precedent of Berlin in 1936 when it decides on the venue of the 2008 Games in Moscow next week."

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