Who Politicised the Olympic Games?

As the 2008 Beijing Olympics approach, voices from different international organisations calling on the Chinese regime to improve its human rights record are growing louder. Reporters without Borders, Amnesty International, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Human Rights Watch, and other international human rights organisations have published reports and held activities to ask the Beijing government to fulfil its promises of improving the Chinese people's human rights.

Just how has the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) responded to these criticisms? On the one hand its public spokesman Jiang Xiaoyu, Vice President of the Executive Committee of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, claimed that the CCP regime "is opposed to politicising the Olympic Games." On the other hand, the Chinese police has been secretly issuing "Notifications on Strictly Carrying out Background Investigations on Candidates for the Olympics and Performing Pre-Selection Screenings" to each province, autonomous region, police station, and municipal bureau directly under the Central Government. In this notification, the CCP regime reveals that anyone who falls into any of the listed 43 categories, subdivided further into 11 different subcategories, must be excluded from the Olympic Games and competitions. On the list are China's "enemies," by its own definition: "Falun Gong practitioners, religious extremists, and members of such religions, national separatists, media people who endanger the Olympic Games, and non-governmental organisations involved in activities that pose a threat to the Olympic Games."

Actually, in order to really oppose politicising the Olympic Games and the discrimination and violation of human rights for political reasons, people from around the world have already called for improvements in the human rights situation in China with the coming of the Olympic Games to Beijing. They believe in the Olympic spirit. Would anybody claim that humanising the Olympic Games is being political? While the CCP yells, "We oppose politicising the Olympic Games!" it regards the Olympic Games as a huge political opportunity. Using "security for the Olympic Games in Beijing" as an excuse, the CCP regime has implemented a tight political censoring program on all foreigners and athletes, forbidding 43 types of people who have criticised the Chinese Communist regime in the past from attending the Games. At the same time the CCP has started to suppress the Chinese people even more. They have limited the freedoms of people who believe in religions and forbid them from speaking out or assembling.

The CCP regime has given secret orders "to intensify the strength of the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners" and "to completely eradicate Falun Gong before the Olympic Games." Under orders from the Public Security Bureau of China, the gestapo-like 610 Offices at all levels and police departments have illegally arrested more Falun Gong practitioners. In some areas they have searched one house after another. If they find Falun Dafa books and Falun Dafa truth-clarification materials in the home, they immediately arrest the owners, brutally beat them and may sentence them to forced labour.

In Hubei Province, between the evening of June 22nd and the morning of June 23rd, over forty people were illegally arrested and had their homes ransacked. The following are a few of the Falun Gong practitioners and their family members who were persecuted during this time:

In Wuhan City, Hubei Province: Cheng Jing, Feng Yu, Sheng Hongyan, Hu Yongjun, Guo Yisong, Pang Lijuan, Yang Guomin and his wife Zuo Ru (who doesn't practise Falun Gong), Yang Yu'e and her husband Cheng Dehan (a non-practitioner).

In the Xinzhou District in Wuhan City, Hubei Province: Liu Cuilian, Zhu Youshan, Tong Chunfeng, Li Qiaoren, Zhang Shenyou, and his wife Pan Hongli.

In Macheng City, Hubei Province: Shi Xuefeng, Fang Hongbin, Liu Xin, Li Yunni, Bai Zijian, Liang Xia, Xiao Ding, Tian Dani, Grandma Yu, Dong Shuzhen, Doctor Dai, Hu Zhongming, Xie Chengying, Yi Xingxiang, Shi Xuemin, Lu Gongyou, Shi Xuexing and his wife Li Jini, Xiao Song.

In Hong'an County, Hubei Province: Li Sannu, Liu Hongsu, Wu Suhua, Qin Hongjuan, Xiao Ren, Xiao Li and Li Changrong.

During the arrests, ten or twenty policemen surrounded the practitioners' homes. The police did not give their names or identification, and some of them climbed over enclosed walls to break into the house or even tore down walls or pried open doors with crowbars. Some of them switched off the power and deceived the practitioner into opening the door. The police brutally beat the family members of practitioners, with some of them losing consciousness from the beating. The police ransacked practitioner's homes or beat them and robbed them of their possessions including cell phones, a motorcycle, computers, printers, MP3 players, satellite dishes, and bankbooks.

It is the Chinese Communist regime itself that has politicised the Olympic Games, and it is the CCP that has taken advantage of the Olympic Games as its excuse and opportunity to solidify its power and suppress people who maintain righteous thoughts and consciences. The whole country is immersed in an atmosphere of terror and turmoil.

The Party relentlessly tramples on human rights and denigrates the Olympic spirit while challenging human virtue and conscience, but to no avail, as it approaches its end. The CCP's atrocities no longer frighten the Chinese people. Instead, they are accelerating the awakening of the Chinese people.

When August 9 dawned on Constitution Square in the heart of Athens, delegations from Europe, North America, Asia, and Australia, as well as other supporters from various organisations, observed the grand occasion at the birthplace of the Olympic movement, one year ahead of the Beijing 2008 Olympics. The ceremony launched the year-long journey of the "Global Human Rights Torch Relay." Its theme song proclaimed:

"Stop the persecution
Give back our rights
Shackles cannot replace the Olympic wreath
Let the human rights torch
Kindle the whole world
Blood cannot taint the Olympics' purity and sacredness."

As it was sung, three young women representing the Greek goddesses of Freedom, Peace, and Justice walked toward the altar holding the torch. Then the European torch carrier lit his torch from that of the young women at the altar. He in turn lit the torches held by delegations from Australia, North America, and Asia. It was a moment befitting the Olympic spirit.

The only way for the Olympic Games to be held in Beijing with any dignity is for the CCP to immediately stop all persecution of Falun Gong practitioners. Those who have been arrested or detained must be released, and the CIPFG must be invited to freely investigate human rights conditions in China.