With the closing ceremonies for the Beijing Olympics clearly in sight now, China has gone into a frenzied suppression of all people and all things that might potentially spoil its bid to enter the modern world. Two elderly women, for example, who were forcibly evicted from their homes in 2001, have applied five times to stage a protest in the approved 'protest zones.' Yesterday, these women, aged 77 and 79, were interrogated for ten hours, and ultimately sentenced to one year of re-education through labor (see story here). I suppose, as the bumper sticker reads, the beatings will stop when the attitudes improve? And in another report, you'll learn that China has blocked access to the iTunes online store after it was discovered that Olympic athletes were actually downloading the CD, Songs for Tibet, which I mentioned in yesterday's posting. Silly athletes, in need of re-education.
Also: not a single protest has been approved in China during the Olympic games, even though promises were made to allow them in the approved areas (a policy that is often in effect in this country as well, although here they are more routinely approved.)
There's more, and I couldn't make this up: While French President Nicolas Sarkozy declined to meet with the Dalai Lama during his 12-day visit to France because the Chinese--let's face it--told him he couldn't, the job has been handed to the French Human Rights Minister Yama Rade.
Who?
Qin Gang, a representative from the Chinese Foreign Ministry, stated that "we hope the French side respects China's concerns and will deal carefully with the important and sensitive issues."
Read: We know that the French Human Rights Minister will refuse to speak of the
continuing human rights abuses in Tibet and the oppression of the Chinese dissidents in Beijing and elsewhere, particularly during the run-up to the Games, whose essential spirit--if you believe in essential spirits--we have thoroughly and triumphantly violated.
I need to state this clearly for my own benefit: Beijing gets the Olympics and steps up its human rights abuses as protests mount; the IOC remains not only silent, but supportive of the oppressive regime; and China begins a regular, thorough, and unrelenting program of propagandistic abuse of those heads of state who have enough nerve (Nicolas Sarkozy didn't; Gordon Brown didn't) to meet with one of the world's leading ambassadors of peace and tolerance who happens to have under that robe of his a Nobel and Congressional Gold Medal . . .
Does anyone find this cheeky, or bullying, or troubling, or manipulative?
But not to worry: His Holiness, while in France, will meet with Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, heiress, international super-model, and Madame President of France.
O to be a fly on that wall . . .
