Should we boycott the coming Olympics in China? China's support of Sudan is reason enough. They are more implicit in Genocide than just about any other country.
Recent immoral and unethical actions seem to have brought a bit more attention on to China's practices. From contaminated toothpaste to pet food China is sending out dangerous products. Antifreeze and other poisons being used to save money? Recent revelations could be the tip of the iceberg.
The human rights record of China, as we all know, is very bad. The jailing of anyone who dissents and the harvesting of human organs are some of the more well known atrocities.
I hope most would agree that we SHOULD threaten to boycott the Olympics if China doesn't make serious changes, but do you think we will? Probably not unless we put tremendous pressure on our leaders. Is there any tangible action that we can take to leverage China into action. Or perhaps first to leverage our leaders into leveraging their leaders?
If there is any possibility that we can get China to do what it can to end the Genocide we must try. At this point most folks know of this horrible tradgedy, but no one knows what to do(at least as individual citizens.) It seems as if no one with any power is willing to do more than talk and hand wring. I believe that the U.N. is very important, but they are failing along with the rest of the world. The U.S. should threaten a boycott and mean it. I would think that the Chinese government would work quite hard to avoid such a thing. Hopefully a coalition of Western countries(Europe/Canada) would join in. This could really work. At worst it would put further pressure on China to change as we highlight the dire need for their government to do so.
What would it take to get Congress to push this? Of course it could be seen as "risky" and unpopular to actually skip the Olympics, but didn't we skip out on the U.S.S.R. once? Such an action may even be considered "mainstream." After all, Bill Richardson discussed doing exactly this at one of the Democratic presidential debates.
I may be idealistic, but it seems like at this time there is a chance for a grass roots push that would turn into a nation wide push. Who else is going to do it?