Human Rights Torch Reaches Berlin, Calls for Boycott of 2008 Beijing Olympics
Posted by chinaview on August 22, 2007
By Florian Godovits, Epoch Times Berlin Staff, Aug 21, 2007-
BERLIN—Over two weeks in August 1936, Nazi Germany painted a rosy picture to the world of peace and prosperity during the Berlin Summer Olympics.
Outside the same Olympic Stadium, human rights activists last Saturday called for a boycott of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, as the Human Rights Torch Relay (HRTR) made its first stop in Europe.
Set to pass through more than 35 countries and 100 cities, the global torch relay started last week in Athens, running under the banner: “No Olympic Games in China without human rights.” It was organised by the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (CIPFG), an international coalition of individuals and organisations concerned about widespread human rights violations in China, according to the organisation’s website.
Former Olympian Ms Ines Geipel was a member of the East German (GDR)
cross-country team in the 1980s. She was the starting runner of the protest-relay and completed part of the track with 7 year old Fadu Chen, who lost her father due to the persecution of the meditation practice Falun Gong in China six years ago (photo right).
“Those who celebrate the Olympic Games in China next year without a change of the human rights situation should know they are doing so with murderers,” Ms Geipel said in front of a crowd of about one hundred people that had come to the handover of the torch.
Also carrying the torch were Andreas Krieger and his wife Ute Krieger-Krause, both
former athletes and victims of a systematic doping campaign by the communist government of East Germany (GDR). The program saw unsuspecting athletes given large doses of anabolic steroids to boost their results, despite adverse health effects.
(photo: former athletes Andreas Krieger and his wife Ute Krieger-Krause)
Secret East German files recently revealed that as many as 10,000 athletes were involved in a state-sponsored attempt to build a country of 16 million into a sports power rivaling the United States and the Soviet Union.
Mr Krieger, a shot putter who won a gold medal in the 1986 European Athletics Championship, said that although the former Soviet-controlled GDR and today’s communist China were different systems, there would be similarities in the methods used to suppress and ideologise people.
“We can’t always shift off our responsibility; we have to make a statement today … Only discussions all the time … Meanwhile people are dying,” said Mr Kreiger.
“Never has compliance with the enemies of freedom been any use to freedom,” stated
Rainer Wagner, chairman of the Union of Victim Associations of Communist Tyranny (UOKG) in a speech at Berlin’s Olympic Square. “With deep sadness, we witness that western politics and business is sacrificing its ethical values for short-sighted financial gains and the illusion of fake communication.”
(photo right: Ms. Rainer Wagner, chairperson of UOKG spoke on ceremony)
The HRTR’s next stop will be Munich. It is expected to arrive in Australia at the end of October.
- Original report from the Epochtimes : Human Rights Torch Relay Reaches Berlin
coco said
Dear All,
I wonder if you can help my dear sister.
My sister was a formal FLG follower, although she doesn’t stick onto FLG anymore, she was under strict watch by the government.
By the end of 2006, when she was giving lesson to her class (she worked in an university in Shanghai), she said: “FLG is illegal in China, but legal in foreign countries”, only because of this sentense, she was caught and sentenced to 3.5 year jail!
The trial is absolutely unfair, there were no evidences or witness to prove that my sister has accused the government and tried to propoganda FLG, actually, the district police and district 610 office convinced that my sister didn’t commit any crime, she is not a follower of a FLG any more, and she should be released.
While some big guy in the general 610 office in Shanghai ignors all the facts and decided to punish her. The court has to follow his order, the laws are just bullshit.
Now the decision is nearly final, although we tried to call for a review of this case, our request was denied in a crucial way.
We are not allowed to visit her, nor call her, if she be transferred from the temparary jail to the final jail in 15 September, she will not be allowed to write letters for 3 months, we will not know if she will survive such tragedy during this 3 months.
I knew your name well, and I believe that you are brave men with the feeling of justice. Now I feel, as a Chinese, how small we are! To search for support internationally is the only thing we can do!
What we want is to make this case public, so that they dare not to maltreat / murder my sister in the jail, so that (if lucky enough), her case will be reviewed. Therefore I wonder if you could mention this case in any relevant public gregation or congress.
I would very much appreciate if you would give double consideration of my requirement and contact with me.
Sincerely,
Coco Zhang
chinaview said
Hi Coco,
It’s sad to hear about your sister’s story. It’s an other example of how ordinary Chinese people is political persecuted only because of telling the facts.
Would you please send me a email of the details of your sister including her name, which university, what department she belong to, and your contact information. Send to me at address: henry2006#fastmail.fm (please change ‘#’ to ‘@’).
Basically,the actions you can take could including:
1. write letters to human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Human Rights in China, Human Rights without Frontiers, etc
2. write letters to human rights organizations specifically focus on persecution of Falun Gong, including Falun Gong Human Rights working Group, Falun Dafa Information Center, etc.
3. write to medias who will not bend to Chinese regime’s pressure and not willing to self-discipline. Though is not easy to find out a large media to speak out for Falun Gong, it’s worthy for your to try.
There’s one you don’t want to miss, the Epochtimes, which is always good at exposing the persecution of Chinese people including Falun Gong.
4. Are you living outside China or inside China? if you are a resident of any western countries, you can also ask help from your MP and city councils, also from your local city medias.
5. and more other ideas.
I’d be happy to do my best to give you a help. please let me know the details by sending email to the above address or leave comments under this Blog’s About page.
Good luck.
chinaview said
Reminder to Coco:
When you send email, never use Yahoo email account.
Yahoo is an immoral business company using its email service helping the Chinese government arrest Chinese people.
Wangchuk said
Skele –‘tons’ in China’s Closets
Tseing Wangchuk Lhutru
“Latest threat: Toxic clothes from China” reads on front page of Times of India, August 22, 2007. Recent outbreaks of news on China’s misdeeds on the cost of Human Right violation are nonetheless unveiling the true face of Peoples republic of China to this part of free world. The “Great Nation Building” propaganda widely publicized will have to shatter because of its rootlessness.
According to a Chinese belief ‘the white colored concrete between bricks of the ‘Great Wall of China’ are skeletons of human used as concrete’. Given the mentality of Chinese over their counterpart, there left no such extent to what China can do to employ their sinister policies. Only when, these sinister policies came rushing into this neighborhood of free world, alas! World seems be to taking it in account.
The recent row of ‘Toxic Toys, Toxic Clothes and Toxic Dog Food’ are actually indication towards the more sinister and inhuman policies that PRC is employing in China to “Great leap forward”. ‘Inhuman policies’ practiced on people under totalitarian regime of CCP like the people working in one of these factories with raw toxics that produces toxic goods.
PRCs rush to “Economic boom” or “Super Power” seems to have no parameters for do’s and don’ts as was in Mao era when he would export tons of food to acquire ‘Dirty Bombs’ while his country was starving with greatest ever famine in the history of China. Take Durfur case for an instance; thanks to actress Mia Farrow that one of the sinister policies of PRC was unveiled. To extract as much oil from Sudan, PRC is more or less directly participating in the genocide of the African ethnic in Durfur by trading arms for oil with Sudanese government. The government which has made ‘African ethnic cleansing’ as core of their policy. With the extent of upheaval created by PRC it does not deserve the economic and political sanction that the government of free world is extending. On the contrary, PRC should be condemned and subjected to political and economic isolation or isolation on any other ground. It should start with ‘Olympic 2008’ in China.
Frenzy of 2008 Olympic should turn into ‘skeleton key’ to the closets of skeletons in China. It is high time people of this free world should know about the China’s sinister plans and the upshot of their government endorsing such country. Beijing 2008 Olympic Games can be simply calculated into two consequences, either respected nations will end up endorsing the PRC state with its greatest ever human rights violation record or responsible citizens of this world will take up the issues of Human rights violation against PRC and bring them to a substantial agreement.
Mistakes have been made when majority of world’s government endorsed the state of Peoples Republic of China in 70s. While in China estimate of 70 million people died (peace time) under Mao’s regime of famine and mass murders, various government cared to choose strategic alliance with PRC. Since then PRC did not care to look back on their Human right records and went on to become ‘star’ in pertaining to committing Human right violations.
Endorsement in UN, in UN Security Council, World Trade organization and MFN all has nothing but encouraged the PRC of Chinese Communist party to perpetrate further Human right violations. In 1993 the United States threatened not to renew China’s “most favoured nation” (MFN) trading status unless human rights conditions in China improved. However, in May 1994 the United States renewed China’s MFN designation, even though the Chinese government had made little progress towards improving its human rights record.
A Chinese political dissident and longtime U.S. resident whose imprisonment attracted the attention of the Bush administration finally made his way home from China few days back, after five years in Chinese jails and a four-month struggle to gain Beijing’s authorization to leave the country. Accused of spying, Yang Jianli is an activist working for Human Rights in China. US had to bargain hard on this case. As Jerry Cohen, a China criminal law expert and professor at New York University Law School comments, “They throw us a bone occasionally and use these cases to do so. We used to get much more cooperation when they wanted to get to the World Trade Organization and China needed leverage with the U.S. Congress”.
Is this is the face of world where a country with records of highest human rights violation can maneuver the world? I don’t think so. As the former Prime minister of England Mrs. Margaret Thatcher puts it “the Chinese need the West more than we need China”. It is time to condemn and boycott China and 2008 Olympics in cohesive not for Tibet, Inner Mongolia, Falun Gong, democrats or millions of Chinese suffering in China but for Human kind, to keep the light of goodness alive.
lothar schulz said
Ein fohes Neues jahr!