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Activists oppose Beijing Olympics
GENEVA (AP) -- Human rights violations by Chinese authorities disqualify Beijing from holding the 2008 Olympics, prominent critics of the communist government said Tuesday. "China is no place for the Olympics," said Lois Wheeler Snow, widow of an American author venerated by Beijing. "For the sake of all those who have suffered, and continue to suffer, China should not be awarded the dignity and honor of hosting the Games." Snow, widow of journalist Edgar Snow, joined with exiled dissident Wei Jingsheng and Reporters without Borders in launching a campaign to derail the Beijing bid. Having lost to Sydney by two votes for the 2000 games, Beijing is favored to win the vote to stage the 2008 Olympics. Paris; Toronto; Istanbul, Turkey; and Osaka, Japan, will be the other candidates when the IOC votes in Moscow next month. "China says we should keep politics out of the Olympics," said Wei. "But the government is increasing political repression." Wei, who had been in prison since 1979, was released just ahead of the 1993 vote to award the 2000 Games and was arrested again after the Beijing bid failed. He was freed on medical parole three years ago, and now heads the Washington-based Overseas Chinese Democracy Coalition. Reporters without Borders has produced billboards showing the five-ring Olympic symbol transformed into sets of handcuffs, carrying the slogan "The Olympics in Beijing? China: Gold Medal for Human Rights Violations." "Awarding the 2008 games to Beijing would be as monstrous as holding the 1936 event to Nazi Germany," said Robert Menard, secretary-general of the Paris-based reporters group, which campaigns for freedom of the press worldwide. "It's simply unacceptable to hold them in a country as oppressive as China," said Menard, whose organization wrote two weeks ago to 123 members of the IOC. He said he had urged the IOC to vote against Beijing because of its muzzling of the press, crackdowns against dissidents and brutal policies in Tibet. But he had received no replies, he said. Snow, who lives in Switzerland, drew the ire of the Chinese government last year when she tried to visit the mother of a victim of the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protesters. Her husband had been declared a "friend of China" for his sympathetic coverage of the communist struggle in the 1930s and 1940s. Some of his ashes are buried at Beijing University. In March, U.S. Congress members said Beijing should not get the Olympics unless China radically improves its human rights record. A resolution, urging the IOC to reject Beijing's bid, passed the House International Relations Committee. No date has been set for consideration by the full House.
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