(Minghui.org) For many Chinese, seeing the Chinese athletes win gold medals at the Olympic games excites them and makes them feel proud that they live in a great country. 

But for me, a practitioner of Falun Gong, seeing Chinese athletes win medals only leaves me cold. In 2016, not long after I was released from serving a wrongful term for my faith, the Olympics were held in Rio. An inmate later told me that everyone in the prison was very anxious to see how many medals China won compared to other countries. Some inmates implied to the detained Falun Gong practitioners that, if China ranked first, they could arbitrarily kill them [the practitioners] without being held accountable. For them, if China wins the most medals, that means that the country is strong, and it gives them the power to silence any voice that objects to it.

Just like many other communist countries, such as the Soviet Union and the former East Germany, which devote so many resources to training athletes to win at the Olympics (including injecting them with steroids, hormones, or other sophisticated drugs) in order to glorify their totalitarian regimes, China is doing the same. Victory in the field of sports sweeps China’s horrible human rights abuses under the carpet, making the Chinese forget that their fellow countrymen are being tortured for their faith or even killed for their organs, and that they themselves are still living in a crummy apartment and can’t afford to pay the bills due the next day. 

Many of the athletes are also victims themselves. When they retire with badly damaged bodies from injuries and long-term (forced) doping and very little education due to the time-consuming physical training, many struggle to find a decent job. Some end up begging on Beijing’s subways or working as a masseuse in a public bathhouse.

To me, the stronger such a country becomes, the more harm it will do to its people.