[+/-] : Boycott the Chinese Olympics?

Olympic bloody games

Boycott the Chinese Olympics?

by Suzana Megles,Opednews

I keep on asking myself: why wasn't there a clamor and protests when the
Olympic Committee selected China for the Summer Olympics 4 years ago?
I know that this announcement made me very angry. How could they have chosen China to host the games? Over the last 30 years I remember reading so many accounts of cruelty to animals in China, particularly in the southern part. Should not the way a country treats its animals be a factor in the selection process?


Now that the "damage" has been done and the Olympic Torch is making its way to Beijing, should I and others of my ilk boycott the games? Someone even hoped that the Olympiads would do so. But that's a very, very big stretch-- seeing as I haven't even heard any rumblings in this direction from the rank and file. But the question persists for me-should I boycott the games? At one internet site, I was one of three at the time who said we would.


I think I'll hold to that even though some incredibly compassionate and brave people who have visited some of China's live animal markets are seeing the Olympic games being held this year as an opportunity for us to urge China to improve the situation at live animal markets. Sadly though, we can't even seem to close down our own cruel ones in San Francisco-- despite wonderfully caring and enterprising people who are continually working to do so.

I guess a very great part of the problem is the customers in SF Chinatown and Fisherman's Wharf who want their frogs, lobsters, turtles, fish, chickens, quail, doves, and pheasants freshly killed and slaughtered on-the-spot. Obviously, they are not all Chinese who keep this cruelty going. But it is gratifying to know that there are Asian-American animal rights activists who are simply demanding that animals killed for food be housed and slaughtered humanely according to existing law.

They have painted for us a horrible visual picture of what happens in these live animal markets: "In Chinatown shops, live turtles are hacked apart limb by limb and shells are cut off while the animal is still alive. Chickens, frogs, and doves are suffocated by stuffing them into plastic bags. Frogs are clubbed and skinned alive."

In 1997 San Francisco attorney Baron Miller, acting on behalf of a coalition of animal rights activists sought an injunction agains 12 Chinatown live animal market merchants. In 1998 Superior Court Judge Carlos T. Bea ruled against the animal rights activists' lawsuit, arguing that the Bible's language granting humans "dominion" over animals condones animal cruelty. I had to read that twice -- for me and I hope the majority of people reading this -it is an absolute perversion of what God meant when He gave us dominion over the animals. And these are the people sitting on our benches of law?

As for the Chinese Live Animal Markets, Wanda Embar of Animal Asia, along with two of their team, Christie and Rainbow, visited one in Guangzhou in southern China. They admit that this is the hardest part of their work-- but among the most important because by monitoring the situation, they are able to expose the truth about these hell holes.

As their taxi pulled up to Maoshan Market, they heard the screams of terrified animals. Their cries echoed around each avenue of the market until they finally met the eyes of petrified dogs and cats who were minutes or hours from death. She wrote: "Panting from thirst and dehydration, crying with terror, confusion and pain, their suffering is profound. Sometimes their tails wag in hopeful anticipation that the soft apologies of people recording
their pain will lead to release- until their eyes fade once again into hopeless reality and they turn away."

In tiny cages stacked high-- hundreds of dogs and cats are piled in. While they were there, one cat cage broke opened and all hell broke loose as three cats found the opening and dashed out into the lane trying to flee. But the traders quickly cornered the terrified cats and Wanda describes this terrible scene: "......grasping them around the necks with wire tongs and
smashing them onto the ground until their bodies go limp. A young ginger male twitches for a few seconds and becomes still. A black and white cat convulses wildly in a semi-conscious state, blood pouring from her mouth, nose, and broken legs before awaking more fully and trying to scramble under a truck." The traders let her go knowing that she will soon die of shock and pain and isn't worth chasing."

The internet has so many facets and information re China's shame in the way animals are viewed and treated. On another occasion three members of Animals Asia made a trip to Chongqing Safari Park to monitor the situation of animal treatment there. They found thousands of bored and unhappy animals and some were forced to "perform" with the help of a whip.

At one point they drove through the tiger enclosure, where they were told to expect live animal feeding, when a chicken was suddenly thrown out of a safari park car. One tiger pounced on the live bird and began leisurely plucking its feathers before eating the meat. If this was meant as entertainment, it certainly backfired. In the past many zoos did live feeding to the crocodilians until I believe the London Zoo pioneered a more
humane feeding of either freshly killed animals or frozen meat which is thawed.

So much to cover - old women in southern China boiling cats alive for their curative powers. Using caged bears with incisions to "milk their galls" for questionable medical use. And last but not least - the cruel dispatching of dogs on the menu in some Chinese restaurants. It is one thing to use dog meat, but caging them for long periods, with their snouts tied up and their
front legs bound --unable to eat or drink until they are mercifully dispatched. That is barbaric.

However, less we feel too superior --what about our own food animals? We can use some lessons in compassion and humane husbandry by tearing down the factory farms from hell. And we can also make certain that the slaughter lines are slowed down enough-- insuring that no animal goes through the slaughtering process ALIVE.

I have been concerned about animal suffering ever since I received my first puppy Peaches in 1975. She made me take a good look at the animal kingdom and I was shocked to see how badly we treat so many animals. At 77, I've been a vegan for the past 30 years and I thank God every day that I am. I am most disturbed at how little the Catholic Church and Christian churches generally give to concern re animal suffering in their ministry. I wrote to 350 bishops in 2001 and only 10-13 responded. I feel that the very least they can do is to instruct that the priests give one sermon a year on compassion to animals. I am still waiting for that sermon. I also belong to Catholic Concern for Animals - founded in England in 1929. (They are on the internet) I recently sent a sample copy of their bi-monthly publication called the ARK to the 8 Catholic bishops of Ohio. Only ONE kindly responded. Somehow we have to reach the Christian teaching magisterium. There is next to nothing re animal concerns and compassion for them. They basically believe that animals are the lessor of God's creation and that gives us the right to do anything we want to them. Way wrong. We need to change their mindsets. The animals are God's first and He expects us to treat them compassionately. I loved all of Mark Hawthorne's writings. God bless him and may he continue to be a voice for the voiceless.

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[+/-] : Boycott as the only effective form of protest

Boycott as the only effective form of protest
Posted By Beth Gandy On May 13, 2008

Beth Gandy talks to the Vice President of the European Parliament on Olympic boycott and human rights abuses China

While the Olympic Torch, the manifestation of the Olympic spirit, continues its tour around the world, April 30 marked 100 days until the start of the Games in Beijing.

However many deem China responsible for genocide in Darfur and Tibet and some vehemently uphold that it is in Tibet that the Olympic spirit died. For these reasons, should a boycott of this year’s event in China take place?


Many in the European Parliament stand by this including its Vice-President, Edward McMillan-Scott, the Conservative MEP for the Yorkshire and Humber region. He created the European Democracy Initiative in 2004 and has been actively campaigning for a debate about the prospect of a boycott.

When interviewed by Nouse he shed some light on the situation. “As the founder of the EU’s £100m democracy and human rights programme, I have tried to gauge the capacity to work in the world’s largest country and its biggest tyranny. There is a universal acknowledgement in the human rights community that the situation in China is already worse than it was in 2001 when it was awarded the games by a hopeful IOC (International Olympic Committee).”

Along with organisations such as Amnesty International, McMillan-Scott believes human rights abuse in China is actually worsening as a consequence of the Olympics. In being asked by the IOC to organise “a secure Olympics Games”, the Chinese government has resorted to more arrests of dissidents and more censorship.

The Games have in the past been used to bring estranged countries together. At the Sydney Olympics in 2000, North and South Korea entered the same stadium together during the opening ceremony for the first time, two countries that consistently antagonise each other at the negotiating table. The South Koreans, in the end, used the Olympics as a coming-out event, as it is hoped China will, and it is now a democracy.

It is thought that the Olympics will give the country exposure to the world, to different ideals will hopefully bring about change. As McMillan-Scott said: “thanks to the boycott campaign, the world is watching China.”

He went on to scrutinise Chinese politics saying that “the techniques of repression in the name of the Chinese Communist Party are so effective with their PR company teaching 84 key Beijing spokesmen how to lie about them. China is selling the same techniques to other tyrannies around the world, from Burma to Sudan to Zimbabwe”.

Politicians worldwide will now face a decision over whether to lend legitimacy to a regime with a terrible human rights record, which continues to oppress people and silence those who oppose it. Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, has vowed to boycott the opening ceremony. Hilary Clinton also recently took to the stand in her election plight, urging George Bush’s administration to reconsider its Olympic plans. France’s President Sarkozy has not ruled out a boycott, and while Gordon Brown has said he will go to the closing ceremony of the Games, it is likely that in private he is uncertain about his position.

McMillan-Scott takes a powerful stand supporting the boycott saying: “It is time for the democratic world to stand up and be counted”.

Article printed from Nouse.co.uk: http://www.nouse.co.uk

URL to article: http://www.nouse.co.uk/2008/05/13/boycott-as-the-only-effective-form-of-protest/
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[+/-] : On Boycotting the Beijing Olympics

On Boycotting the Beijing Olympics
Eric Reeves | May 13, 2008 Foreign Policy In Focus www.fpif.org

Recent events -- in Darfur, in Tibet, in Burma, and within China -- force an inevitable debate about the appropriate political and moral response to China’s hosting of the Summer 2008 Games, and in particular whether some form of boycott is warranted. Unfortunately, if predictably, there has been a good deal more heat than light generated by this debate, which too often reflects clashing axioms rather than informed argument. Since my own expertise lies in understanding Sudan, and in particular the ongoing genocide in Darfur, I’ll necessarily focus on this part of the debate. But few working on Sudan are unaware of the controversies associated with Chinese economic policy and human rights standards elsewhere in Africa.

My own view is that there is a morally intolerable contradiction between Beijing’s hosting of the 2008 Games, the preeminent international event in sports, and its deep complicity in the ultimate international crime, genocide in Darfur. I believe we cannot have sporting “business as usual” while China continues to be instrumental in supporting the brutal Khartoum regime in its obstruction of a UN-authorized peace support operation, designed to protect millions of vulnerable Darfuri civilians and the thousands of humanitarian workers upon whom they increasingly depend for survival.

Slippery Slope

Of course “slippery slope” arguments abound in the debate about any form of Olympic boycott. Many center on the foreign policy of the United States, instancing the war in Iraq, Abu Ghraib, and Guantanamo Bay. How can we in the United States boycott games in China, the argument goes, when the United States has also committed terrible atrocities. These are indeed deep disgraces to the US, as well as a terrible squandering of moral and political capital of precisely the sort needed in confronting the Khartoum regime. So, I would understand decisions of conscience, by athletes and governments, that put such important issues in the balance the next time the United States hosts the Games. Still, whatever the force of “slippery slope” arguments -- “no country is without sin, therefore no political or moral response targeting the Olympic host country can be justified” -- we must confront the unsurpassably grim precedent of allowing Nazi Germany to host the Games in Berlin in 1936.

Was it right to attend these Games and the propaganda extravaganza that accompanied them? Should governments, alone or together, have done more to rebuke this brazen display of fascist arrogance? However impressive Jesse Owens’ achievements were, did they counter-balance the implicit international ratification of Hitler’s dictatorship and its racist, militaristic policies? Did the International Olympic Committee do enough to speak out against the conspicuously impending horrors of Nazism? In retrospect the answers are clearly no; at the time, however, there was already far too much evidence that should have precluded attendance under the circumstances readily apparent.

For those inclined to forgive the International Olympic Committee its decision to award the Games to Germany (the IOC decision was made before Hitler assumed the Chancellorship in 1933), we should recall that the IOC would subsequently award the 1940 Winter Olympics to Hitler’s Germany (though the 1939 invasion of Poland seems to have been too much even for the IOC).

What is often lost in present debates and newspaper editorials is that the primary call is for a boycott not of the Beijing Games as a whole, but of the opening ceremonies. The world’s Olympic athletes would not be denied the chance to compete for medals and the honor of their sport. Yet even if the distinction is recognized, attempts to defend such a targeted boycott are just as often met with the thoughtless mantra of “don’t politicize the Games.” This of course ignores just how deeply political these Games have become. They are China’s post-Tiananmen coming-out party, an effort by Beijing to take what it believes is its rightful place on the geopolitical stage. They are in this sense, in their larger ambitions, aptly compared to the 1936 Olympics and Hitler’s attempt to demonstrate Aryan supremacy. To be sure, the crimes of Nazi Germany, which lay primarily in the future, were themselves genocide on an unprecedented scale, while China’s present actions represent deep complicity in Khartoum’s savagely genocidal counter-insurgency war in Darfur. But this difference cannot obscure the profoundly political nature of the two Olympiads or the shared triumphalism meant to overwhelm criticism of abhorrent domestic and international policies.

Darfur

How, then, to assess international advocacy efforts to hold China accountable in its unique role as Olympic host? In particular, how can we speak fully and reasonably about the moral claims Darfur makes upon us in the context of China’s role in Sudan? Again, I leave aside comparable questions about China’s appalling domestic human rights record, its half century of conquest and repression in Tibet, and its support for such regimes as the Burmese junta and the despotic Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe.

Darfur’s claims are of the highest order. The genocidal ambitions that have produced such staggering human suffering and destruction in this tortured region must compel the deepest moral consideration. Approximately half a million people have died from violence and war-related disease and malnutrition since the start of major conflict in 2003. More than 2.6 million people have been forced from their homes, most losing everything as their villages have been destroyed on a clearly ethnic basis. Khartoum’s deliberate, widespread, and systematic targeting of the non-Arab or African tribal populations in Darfur is a matter beyond reasonable dispute, even if a peculiar intellectual diffidence prevents certain organizations and institutions from inferring that such destruction meets all the terms specified by the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

The overwhelming majority of displaced people are now in camps, often without adequate food or clean water or security. Some 250,000 have been turned into refugees in neighboring Chad, where Darfur’s genocidal violence has continued to bleed with evermore destabilizing consequences. Even as the UN’s World Food Program has just announced that it will soon have to cut food rations by half, 4.4 million people in Darfur need humanitarian assistance.

China and Sudan

China has played a key role in sustaining the Darfur genocide and the enormous risk to regional security in the center of Africa. Beijing has over the past decade been the Khartoum’s primary supplier of weapons and weapons technology. Many weapons of Chinese manufacture continue to find their way into Darfur despite a UN arms embargo on the region. Amnesty International has reported compellingly over the past year on the deadly flow of Chinese weapons, including military aircraft, into Darfur.

China has dominated the oil development consortia, mainly in southern Sudan, and done so in a way deeply destructive of southern civilian lives and livelihoods. As China’s thirst for crude oil grows by more than 10 percent a year, Sudan has emerged as its primary source of offshore oil production. More than two-thirds of Sudan’s oil is imported by China, which shows no signs of caring for the human costs of oil extraction.

China has provided as much as $15 billion in capital and commercial investments to the Khartoum-dominated economy in Sudan. It has insulated the Sudanese regime from its profligate ways -- massive external debt would be crippling without Chinese investment – and helped consolidate the regime’s stranglehold on national wealth and power.

Most consequentially, China has continuously blocked effective UN action on Darfur, threatening to veto Security Council resolutions, weakening others, and all the while refusing to countenance any form of sanctions in the event of Khartoum’s non-compliance with UN demands or agreements signed by the regime. Insecurity, which poses the greatest threat to civilians and humanitarians in Darfur, derives directly from the arrogant defiance that Beijing has for years encouraged in Khartoum’s génocidaires. Informed UN officials and Western diplomats make clear that China is the primary obstacle to generating serious diplomatic pressure on the regime to end its obstructionist ways. Nine months after passage of the Security Council resolution authorizing 26,000 civilian police and troops, with a robust mandate to protect civilians and humanitarians, only an ill-equipped third of the force is in place, most left over from the hopelessly inadequate African Union force in Darfur. The impending rainy season will soon make additional deployments logistically almost impossible. All the while security continues to deteriorate, threatening to force a large-scale withdrawal of humanitarian operations and wholesale human destruction

Denying Beijing

China’s complicity in all of this is too clear, too destructive, too deeply contravening not only of the spirit and charter of the Olympics but of all respect for international law. Denying Beijing the reward of its desired audience for the Games’ opening ceremonies, holding the Chinese regime relentlessly accountable for those actions enabling of genocide, makes both moral and political sense.

Though not nearly successful enough, the highlighting of China’s role in the Darfur genocide has already produced a number of unprecedented actions, including Beijing’s appointment of a special envoy for Darfur, voting for (rather than abstaining from) the resolution authorizing a Darfur protection force, and publicly declaring that Khartoum should show “more flexibility” in allowing for UN deployment.

This is not enough. But it is more than enough to demonstrate the efficacy of the current campaign to highlight China’s intolerable role in sustaining the Darfur genocide. The threat to boycott the opening ceremonies of the Games is at once morally compelling and politically efficacious. In the context of complicity in genocide, the crude mantra of “don’t politicize the games” becomes an even cruder moral acquiescence.

Eric Reeves is author of A Long Day's Dying: Critical Moments in the Darfur Genocide and a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus (www.fpif.org).
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[+/-] : Take Action: No Olympic Torch in Tibet!

Tell Coke: No Torch in Tibet!



Coca-Cola, one of the most powerful corporations in the world, is an official sponsor of China's torch relay. Please join Tibetans and supporters worldwide in calling on Coke's executives to use their influence to pressure the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to withdraw Tibet from the torch relay route. Click here to take action now (link is: www.studentsforafreetibet.org/coke)


Also, please keep the pressure on the IOC Executive Members, click here to contact them now. (http://actionnetwork.org/campaign/ioc_executive)

Spread the word by sharing the video above and Click here to learn more....
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