The International Olympic Committee considers the Beijing Games a back-slapping success, but given what it's done to the cause of human rights in China, they should be mollified. Yes, the on-field games were a tremendous success. But at what cost?
They've set back human rights in China for decades!
The Chinese government forcibly relocated hundreds of thousands of people who used to live where the Olympic venues now sit, placed political dissenters under arrest in the weeks before the Olympics, threatened gatherings of more than five people with arrest for fear of public protests in full view of the Olympics and TV cameras, arrested foreign protesters, set up "protest areas" and then arrested applicants who dared to apply for permission to protest in those areas.
The press reported this story on a pair of elderly Chinese women whose house was demolished. When they applied for permission to protest in the "protest area" they were arrested and charged with "disturbing public order" and sentenced to one year in a labor camp to re-education.
And we won't even discuss Tibet, whose "appearance" in the Opening Ceremonies was faked by the Chinese authorities.
The only ones to do their parts were the athletes, who I won't criticize. I'll be happier to see them in London in 2012.
Shame on you, IOC! Develop a backbone, please, and don't award the Olympics to totalitarian regimes that do this kind of thing to their own people.
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