Our friend from Weight Watchers, Emily, is one person we've talked with who is skipping watching the Olympics as a protest against political conditions in China. Not only has the Chinese government crushed a movement for Tibetan semi-autonomy and religious freedom, aided the murderous government of Sudan, and repressed - sometimes brutally - Fulan Gong, Christians, and other religious groups within China - the government has also made a mockery of political expression possibilities during the Games.
You may recall that the government allowed the media to cover the aftermath of the central Chinese earthquakes - but they went back to form later when a protest movement - which the government subsequently repressed - against the government's shoddy construction of school buildings - which contributed to the earthquake-related deaths of kids. The Chinese government advertised that they had set aside three free speech zones, but that one would need to apply for permits to exercise free speech there. People have applied for these permits, but the government has granted none. Earlier this week they sentenced two Chinese women in their late 70s to one year of hard labor/"re-education" camp for merely APPLYING for permits to speak in a free speech zone against the government eminent domain-ing (condemning and destroying) their homes (for some other project). It's not clear whether the government will actually enforce these sentences. But the whole idea that two older women might have to go to a year of labor camp because they merely ASKED several times to speak out at an isolated "free speech" zone suggests how pathetic the free speech situation.
Some of these issues - about how to approach the Games - will come up in the 2010 Winter Olympics - when the Olympics are slated to be in Russia - just a few miles from Russia's border with Georgia, a country that Russia has essentially occupied.
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Our friend from Weight Watchers, Emily, is one person we've talked with who is skipping watching the Olympics as a protest against political conditions in China. Not only has the Chinese government crushed a movement for Tibetan semi-autonomy and religious freedom, aided the murderous government of Sudan, and repressed - sometimes brutally - Fulan Gong, Christians, and other religious groups within China - the government has also made a mockery of political expression possibilities during the Games.
You may recall that the government allowed the media to cover the aftermath of the central Chinese earthquakes - but they went back to form later when a protest movement - which the government subsequently repressed - against the government's shoddy construction of school buildings - which contributed to the earthquake-related deaths of kids. The Chinese government advertised that they had set aside three free speech zones, but that one would need to apply for permits to exercise free speech there. People have applied for these permits, but the government has granted none. Earlier this week they sentenced two Chinese women in their late 70s to one year of hard labor/"re-education" camp for merely APPLYING for permits to speak in a free speech zone against the government eminent domain-ing (condemning and destroying) their homes (for some other project). It's not clear whether the government will actually enforce these sentences. But the whole idea that two older women might have to go to a year of labor camp because they merely ASKED several times to speak out at an isolated "free speech" zone suggests how pathetic the free speech situation.
Some of these issues - about how to approach the Games - will come up in the 2010 Winter Olympics - when the Olympics are slated to be in Russia - just a few miles from Russia's border with Georgia, a country that Russia has essentially occupied.
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