Editor:

I was amazed recently when I saw the beauty and dignity of the closing ceremonies for the Olympic Games in Athens. I really felt that these games had a spirit of international cooperation and competition that was healthy and good for the global community.

It was special to see the world's athletes doing their best in the very city where the Olympics had originated in antiquity.

It was so moving that I thought to myself, "Wouldn't it be great if I could take my family to see the Olympic Games in 2008?"

Then I thought about where the 2008 games are being held.

Beijing, China. Another city with a long history and culture that spreads back into ancient times.

Unfortunately, I cannot go to Beijing to see the 2008 Olympic Games. I am a Falun Gong practitioner, which makes it illegal for me to enter China to see the International Olympics even though I am an American citizen.

China has made it absolutely illegal to practice Falun Gong, the peaceful spiritual practice of truth, compassion and tolerance, punishable by torture and death.

I know what happens to Falun Gong practitioners who try to travel to China.

U.S. Citizen Charles Lee is currently being tortured and brainwashed in a Chinese forced labor camp as I write this letter.

From every report we hear from China, it seems that the Chinese policemen are torturing Charles worse and worse.

I am afraid that if the Chinese leadership doesn't change its ways before 2008 that the world may witness another tainted Olympics like occurred during the Berlin games in 1936.

That year Adolf Hitler refused to acknowledge Jesse Owens' Olympic victories because he was black and a few years later began waging his horrible holocaust against the Jewish people.

It is now 2004 and a terrible genocide is being carried out against Falun Gong practitioners in China.

More than 100,000 peaceful citizens have been illegally detained and the death count is in the thousands.

As the world awaits the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, how many more innocent people will die?

When will China begin to join the international community, truly embrace the Olympic spirit and end its human rights atrocities?

Jim Veteto

Sugar Grove

http://www.wataugademocrat.com/topic.php?tid=20&sid=4658

Category: Falun Dafa in the Media