One Year Ahead of Olympics, Gross Human Rights Violations Persist in China

Aug 7, 2007

David Kilgour applauds Pan Qing at the Olympic Games vs. Crimes Against Humanity In China forum in Athens on August 7. Both support a boycott of the Beijing Games. (The Epoch Times)

(Clearwisdom.net) ATHENS--Chinese Communist Party leaders may have dreamed that on the eve of one-year-before the Olympic Games, they would be the darlings of a positive global media spin. But such a dream, considering a suite of recent revelations, now looks much more like a nightmare.

"What I heard today in this seminar really touched my soul and my heart. I am really touched, shocked, and ashamed that in modern societies such violations could take place," Greek politician Argiris Sideris told The Epoch Times at the Olympic Games vs. Crimes Against Humanity In China forum in Athens on August 7.

Sideris was responding to evidence of large-scale, state-sanctioned organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners, presented at the event by former Canadian Secretary of State (Asia-Pacific region) David Kilgour, leader of the major investigation on this issue.

"Any national government, whose medical professionals are executing, without any prior judicial proceeding, members of an officially disapproved-of spiritual community, as has occurred now for more than half a decade across China...to Falun Gong...is self-evidently unsuited to host the Olympic Games in its capital city," said Kilgour. Kilgour has favored a boycott of the Games since mid-last year.

Faced with this knowledge, Sideris vowed that he would make every effort to have the Greek parliament enact a resolution addressing the issue.

Greek politician Argiris Sideris: "I am really touched, shocked, and ashamed that in modern societies such violations could take place." (The Epoch Times)

Organ harvesting tops a growing list of revelations that a growing number of people say run clearly opposite to the Olympic spirit. These include multiple reports in past months of tainted food, toothpaste, cough syrup, and poisonous toy imports from China--all invariably linked to Communist Party officials and their beneficiaries cutting corners for higher profit margins. They also include the Chinese military's arms sales to Sudan, in full knowledge that the weapons are being used for genocidal practices in Darfur--leading actress Mia Farrow to threaten to dub Beijing 2008 as the "Genocide Olympics."

Last Monday's action near Beijing's International Olympic Committee (IOC) offices by the global media watchdog Reporters Without Borders is another case in point. Following a very public press conference by the group exposing extreme restrictions to press freedom in China, the attending international media themselves were detained by Chinese police for several hours.

Such revelations, showing that economic change in China has not been matched by political change, are causing a number of European governments to re-evaluate their China policies, said forum panelist Man-Yan Ng, director of International Society for Human Rights. He urged governments not to fear threats from Chinese diplomats of economic costs for taking a strong position on China improving its human rights record. Ng noted that despite repeated trade-related warnings from Chinese diplomats, the German parliament recently passed a strong-worded resolution demanding an end to the Chinese Communist Party's infamous forced labor camp system. Beijing's threat proved empty, he said.

Olympic Games vs. Crimes Against Humanity In China Forum participants ask questions of the panel in Athens, on August 7. (The Epoch Times)

In another attempt to reach governments and the IOC today, six Tibet independence activists unfurled a 40 square-meter banner reading "One World, One Dream, Free Tibet 2008" in English and Chinese, from the Great Wall of China itself. PRC police detained them within two hours of the action.

In a decidedly academic portion of the Athens seminar, Director of the Association for Asian Research Erping Zhang explained his research on the model of political and economic development that the Chinese Communist Party now employs, which he calls "Neo-communism." Zhang similarly believes that while economically China is clearly in a very different place compared to twenty years ago, politically it very much remains an authoritarian state.

"You have a communist heart [on the inside], and on the outside, a Western suit," he summarized.

Zhang also offered advice on how governments can be more effective at encouraging Beijing to better its human rights record.

"The European Union, including Greece, should use every political, diplomatic, and economic method to raise and highlight human rights issues with Beijing. The rights dialogue should be held in public forum, because it is a matter of public interest. It will show to China that the EU cares about people, and the interests of China," he said.

What the Chinese Communist Party perceives as the interests of China, for that matter, is vastly different from what the person on the street thinks, said Chinese dissident Pan Qing, a leader in the National Alliance of Defending Human Rights and Resisting Violence.

Pan announced to the forum an 11,000-strong list of signatures from Chinese citizens who have been wronged by the Chinese communist regime, most commonly by having their land seized. The signatures, which Pan will present to the International Olympic Committee in Athens, express a clear sentiment: "We do not need the Olympic Games, we need human rights." Pan sites them as strong evidence that the call to boycott Beijing 2008 is coming not only from voices outside of China, but from deep within the Middle Kingdom itself. Could that become the greatest possible nightmare for the the Communist regime?

Come August 9, the number of voices calling for a boycott of the Beijing Olympics is expected to rise dramatically. The Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong in China (CIPFG), a group comprised of more than 300 senators, MPs, religious leaders, democracy advocates, and human rights defenders, have vowed to call for a boycott if the Chinese Communist Party doesn't shape up by that date. On that date the group will also initiate the Human Rights Torch Relay, which, similarly to the Official Olympic Torch, will travel the world over for a year.

CIPFG will join groups and believe that Beijing 2008, in the current Chinese reality, is a travesty of the Olympic spirit and a direct violation of the Olympic Charter that promotes: "the establishment of a peaceful society concerned with preservation of human dignity."

Kilgour suggests the moniker: "The Bloody Harvest Olympics."

Source: http://en.epochtimes.com/tools/printer.asp?id=58509