The Chinese Government announced today that it has killed five Uighurs suspected of being terrorists, confirming that it had arrested at least 100 since the start of the year. Their crime, most likely, was a combination of being Muslim and unhappy with Chinese authoritarian rule. The crackdown comes as we stand less than a month from the start of the Olympics.
The games will go on.
Other religious dissidents are also suffering, with claims of 8,000 arrested Falun Gong practitioners since December 2007.
And certainly the games will go on.
The PRC has also begun clearing ethnic Tibetans out of Beijing.
Overseas Tibetan advocacy groups said residents of Beijing were targets simply because of their ethnicity. "There's an unprecedented security sweep at the moment in Beijing due to the Olympics," said Kate Saunders, of the International Campaign for Tibet. "It seems as though almost every Tibetan in Beijing is potentially under suspicion."
But let the games go on.
And the grieving parents of those children killed in poorly constructed schools that collapsed in earthquakes – innocent victims of the corruption rotting the PRC from the inside out?
Chinese security forces are putting pressure on angry parents to abandon demands for a full investigation into why so many schools collapsed in the May earthquake in Sichuan province and have rounded up human rights workers in the earthquake-ravaged region.
In tent cities that have sprung up throughout the region, soldiers carrying batons patrol the streets and security agents and police have stepped up efforts to muzzle any sign of "social instability".
Of course the games go on.
It wasn’t that long ago that the US stood up to tyrannical regimes, even if they were holding the Olympics.
"To hold the Olympics in any nation that is warring on another is to lend the Olympic medal to that nation's actions. None of us wants our athletes to suffer, but neither should we let them be exploited. " Former Secretary of State Cyrus Vance
But now there’s too much money on the line. And the games will go on.
NBC has already ponied up $800 million just for the rights to broadcast – let alone the amount of costs sunk into actually airing the games.
And the corporate money?
Companies like Adidas and Internet portal Sohu have coughed up serious money to sponsor the Beijing 2008 Olympics. Estimates have computer maker Lenovo paying $80 million to $100 million to be the official sponsor of the games. Eleven global sponsors--including Coca-Cola and McDonald's--spent a combined $850 million to sponsor the Turin and Beijing Olympics.
The games must go on.
Don't link sports and politics, the IOC tells us. Don't penalize the athletes.
But it is these very games, the money and time invested in them, the national pride at stake (we must never forget the nation), that is inspiring these crackdowns and delaying international pressure.
Yes, the games must go on. But they won't be on my television.