Olympics and Crimes Against Humanity Cannot Coexist

Olympics and Crimes Against Humanity Cannot Coexist

While we are rightfully calling for what we must with compassion in regard to the Olympics, it should be acknowledged that under other circumstances, it would be wonderful and fitting for the Olympics to be held in China, one of the world's great civilizations and the country of the world's largest population. We do not claim to be perfect (neither is there any perfect government on earth) and we are ourselves subject to the universal ideals we espouse. It should be clear that we -- especially those of us who live in the west who are aware of the west's sinful history toward Asia, such as the Opium Wars and the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- are not protesting in any way the idea of an Olympics being held in China.

Whereas China is preparing to host the Olympic Summer Games of 2008, the most honorable, venerated and prestigious international sporting event and has selected One world, one dream as the slogan for those games;

Whereas the Olympic Charter (Article 3) states that: "The goal of the Olympics is to place sports everywhere at the service of a harmonious development of man, with a view to encouraging the establishment of a peaceful society concerned with preservation of human dignity. To this effect, the Olympic Movement engages, alone or in cooperation with other organizations and within the limits of its means, in actions to promote peace";

Whereas in order to win the right to host the 2008 Olympics the Chinese regime promised to improve its human rights record, but recent reports from the UN and Amnesty International have clearly proven that the human rights situation in China is deteriorating; particularly hard hit, in violation of any human morality or conscience, is the community of Falun Gong practitioners;

Whereas Amnesty International has not found any evidence of improvement in human rights in China, and that particularly relating to the Olympic Games there has been increasing repression of human rights activism and domestic journalism. In fact the Olympics have been used by China as a catalyst to extend the use of detention without trial;

Whereas the Falun Dafa Information Center has learned that: China's Ministry of Public Security has issued a Directive that lists 43 categories of unwanted who are to be investigated and banned from the 2008 Beijing Olympics. To be investigated are participating athletes, members of the media, Olympic staff members, referees, sponsors, dignitaries, and the International Olympic Committee itself, among others (e.g. spectators), to determine whether they fall into any of the 43 categories. If carried out, this directive would amount to an espionage effort of astounding proportions, and would fly in the face of International Law. To be banned from the Olympics include: key individuals in ideological fields, overseas hostile forces, counter-revolutionary figures, the Dalai Lama and all affiliates, members of religious entities not sanctioned by the state (e.g. Roman Catholics), and individuals who instigate discontentment toward the Chinese Communist Party through the Internet. The Falun Dafa Information Center learned, also, that: Falun Gong practitioners would be barred, as would family members of deceased persons killed in riots -- a euphemism for events such as the Tiananmen Massacre -- and Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang province, who the regime brands national separatists. Only at the very bottom of the Directive does it identify violent terrorists and members of illegal organizations as targets for investigation and possible barring. This Directive calls upon all levels of Chinas regime to cooperate, but adds that it is vital to keep this Directive and all associated activities secret it is of utmost importance to give the look of an easygoing environment to the outside;

Whereas there is continued persecution by the Chinese Communist Party of Falun Gong, Uighur Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, followers of the Dalai Lama and other religious and spiritual practitioners and continued persecution of friends, supporters and defense lawyers of Falun Gong practitioners (e.g. Gao Zhisheng, Li Hong). An additional extreme inhuman and suppressive human rights violation under International Law is the continued practice of torture and political brainwashing (that goes back to the era of Mao Zedung) which still takes place in over 1000 prisons, slave labor camps (lao gai) and psychiatric so-called clinics in China;

Whereas recent investigation by former Canadian MP David Kilgour and human rights lawyer David Matas has shown documented evidence not only of the scale of the persecution, but also of the systematic harvesting of organs from thousands of live Falun Gong practitioners for sale abroad; we suspect many more such inhuman acts have been perpetrated and concealed;

Whereas China has failed to comply with United Nations Security council Resolutions related to Darfur and many point in particular to the regimes complicity in Sudan, where it has blocked U.N. and other efforts to stem the tide of genocide, with the Chinese regime itself supplying arms to the Sudanese regime even as Sudan has defended its right to transfer and use such military arms and equipment in Darfur for military operations. The current Chinese regime has long-standing economic and military ties with Sudan and continues to strengthen these ties in spite of the on-going genocide in Darfur, as has been clearly detailed in US House of Representatives H.RES.422 of May 21, 2007 which had 130 cosponsors and passed the House by a vote of 410-0, June 5th. A growing body of voices is calling for a boycott of the Beijing Olympics in light of this complicity as well as the regimes domestic human rights abuses;

Whereas the controlling faction of the Chinese Communist Party -- in violation of the Chinese Constitution, has been waging an unprecedented bloody and vicious campaign of torture and suppression against Falun Gong since 1999 -- a campaign that is vast in scope and horrifying in its implementation; human rights workers have documented over 42,000 cases of severe abuse or torture in prison camps and detention centers. Tens of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners in China have been arrested and held on false charges, with thousands sent to slave labor camps without trial. Torture is widespread, and accounts documented of over one thousand deaths in police custody. Thousands have been stripped of their homes, jobs, educations and even families. Thousands are dead. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, languish in labor camps and detention centers throughout China, simply for their practice of Falun Gong - a gentle spiritual practice consisting of exercises and moral teachings - with others sent there merely for letting their fellow countrymen know about the abuses unleashed upon Falun Gong. Brainwashing centers have been established all across China to use forced drugging, electric shock and other extreme torture techniques - psychiatric and physical - to destroy peoples beliefs, implant the Chinese Communist Party line into their hearts and souls and strip them of their humanity...a process so brutal, as numerous eyewitness or survivors accounts have shown us, that we now know that it was designed to leave people in constant pain -- some tortured to the point of internal organ failure -- and psychologically devastated when not dead, often kept alive longer to suffer to the point that they wish they were dead. Many have suffered bodily devastation and spiritual torment unbelievable to civilized societies;

We note that the fact that there were American athletes competing in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin is considered by many to be a blot on the history of the U.S. Olympic Committee. The IOC made a similar mistake, in granting the 1980 Olympic games to the Soviet Union, which then invaded Afghanistan on the eve of those games. Since 2004, China has enacted a so-called anti-secession law, and has repeatedly threatened to attack Taiwan;

Germany's open genocidal discrimination against Jews and others labeled as inferior or subhuman, under the influence of the pseudo-scientific psychiatric classifications of Eugenics, euphemistically called racial hygiene, was already public knowledge when many Americans opposed U.S. participation in the Nazi Olympics. (The German Society for Racial Hygiene was founded in 1905 and the philosophy continues, still, in todays world as ethnic cleansing.) Opponents to U.S. participation included the American ambassadors to Germany and Austria, but those who warned that Hitler and the Nazis would use the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin for propaganda purposes were not heeded. As we know, American participation in the Berlin Olympics and African-American Jesse Owens' four gold medals did not stop the Nazis from being Nazis: Germany won more medals than any other country at the 1936 Olympics and the Nazis pulled off the huge public relations coup that those who called for a boycott of the Nazi Olympics had predicted, casting Germany and the Nazis, falsely, in a positive light. Territorial expansion and the genocidal final solution of millions of Jews followed.

Like the Jewish papers that published the first accounts of the Holocaust, the Epoch Times and the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong have reported on the first eyewitness accounts of imprisoned practitioners of Falun Gong being murdered for their organs in China. If it is true that imprisoned practitioners of Falun Gong are being murdered for their organs in China, a remaining question is the scale of the practice. Although the number of Falun Gong practitioners in custody is uncertain, estimates by the Chinese dissident community range from 235,000 to one million or more. An unnamed military doctor from the mainland told the Epoch Times that Sujiatun is just one of 36 such facilities, created following the directive of Liu Jing, China's former Deputy Minister of Public Security, to "stamp out" Falun Gong "before the Olympic Games in 2008." We fear the worst as we suspect that the profits from Chinese organ harvesting dwarf those of the Nazis' soap and hair-pillow-stuffing enterprises.

Whereas the German Nazi Party targeted Jews particularly as "life unworthy of life," and used the 1936 Berlin Olympics to legitimize their oppression, so does the Chinese Communist Party target Falun Gong practitioners and plan to use the 2008 Beijing Olympics;

Whereas we agree that safeguarding human dignity and humanity is a universal foundation of the Olympics and China should act consistently with the Olympic standard of preserving human dignity; we recognize that the spirit of the Olympics is to bring together nations and people from all over the world in peace, and is incompatible with any actions directly or indirectly supporting or committing acts of torture or genocide;

Whereas the human suffering and human rights violations under International Law have been so extreme, we would like to echo and add to the words of the Asia branch of the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong {CIPFG} which consists of people from Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong and Malaysia:

Until all such atrocities shall cease unconditionally, as verified by open inspection of all labor camps, prisons, hospitals, psychiatric hospitals and related secretive facilities by CIPFG independent investigators, we immediately:

Call upon the International Olympic Committee to change the venue of the 2008 Beijing Olympics without further notice in the name of humanity and International Law, as well as enforcing the Olympic Charter.

Call upon the U.S. Olympic Committee for the United States to withdraw from the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Call for all corporate multi-national sponsors of the Olympics such as Johnson & Johnson, Coca-Cola, General Electric and McDonald's to withdraw their sponsorship.

Call for an international boycott, by individuals and athletes of conscience, of the 2008 Olympic Games if held in Beijing.