Bread and Circuses: The Beijing Olympics

What an odd sight. While Russia invades Georgia, while another top politician crumbles in the wake of a sex scandal (thankfully not involving bathroom tapping), while a million and one little, strange bits of reality swirl around like autumn leaves, we have the spectacle of the Beijing Olympics. The opening ceremonies were truly an artistic achievement...though I am sort of amazed that so few people found certain elements of the ceremony creepy.

For instance, I think having to run for a sustained period of time around a globe while strung upside down by wires might, in another context, have made for an abusive interrogation technique--but I know nothing of acrobatics. Also, in a nation of forced abortions ("no second child left alive!"), forced sterilization, and mandatory birth control, a legion of tai chi practitioners ("ah! That peaceful martial art form!") aggressively asserting the Chinese will to defend their twelve-or-so children while moving in concentric circles around the spot where a globe would soon arise...a little disconcerting. We care for our children! Greatly! The few we've left alive...

And then there's the rest of the story, the reason why the torch's triumphal march around the world was interrupted repeatedly by protests, demonstrations, and other, unaccountable rudeness:

Visitors to Beijing this time around will in all likelihood be spared the sight of tanks crushing unarmed demonstrators and soldiers machine gunning protestors, but they should know that, behind the clean and orderly façade, human rights abuses still proliferate. The streets of Beijing are quiet, but it is the ‘quiet’ of the graveyard. Not only has the Chinese government broken its promises to improve its human rights record prior to the 2008 Olympics, the Games themselves have led this oppressive regime to crack down on dissent on a scale unprecedented since the brutal Cultural Revolution.

The Beijing Olympics are becoming a byword for Beijing’s brutality. The Chinese government holds thousands of political prisoners without charge or trial. These include democracy activists, lawyers, human rights defenders, religious leaders, journalists, trade unionists, Tibetan Buddhists, Uyghurs, ''unofficial'' church members, members of the "underground" Catholic Church, women pregnant with "illegal" children, Falun Gong practitioners, and political dissidents. Name a human right, and Beijing is violating it, probably on a massive scale.

We at PRI have held a series of conferences on the human rights situation in China. Our chief problem is finding enough time for all the various groups whose rights have been violated to tell their story. Overseas, the Chinese government supports regimes that, like it, have no respect for human dignity. Name a brutal dictaorship, and the odds are that its chief international patron and arms supplier is the People's Republic of China.

Read the whole article for a good overview of what's going on behind the scenes at the Beijing Olympics. "One World, One Dream": a lovely statement of unity, perhaps--or is it the unity of totalitarianism?