China's Human Rights Record a Surprise?

As the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing approach, concern over China's human rights violations is snowballing.

Where have these outraged people been? What planet have they been living on? Have they been preoccupied with other matters for the past DECADES?

From the Washington Post:

Zheng Enchong is a self-taught lawyer and a dogged human rights activist. In many countries, he would be considered a gadfly. But in China during this Olympic year, he is treated like a threat to national security.

One police surveillance camera tapes whoever enters or leaves his Shanghai apartment. Another monitors whoever presses the elevator button. A third records people in the building's elevator.

Lest the cameras prove unreliable, plainclothes police officers lounge in one corner of Zheng's landing through the day, smoking, sipping tea and playing cards.

Often, Zheng said, they prevent him from leaving his building. When he tried in February to go out to buy dumplings, the guards beat him up. In recent months, he said, they have been allowing him to attend church most Sunday mornings. But sometimes not. He never knows exactly why.

"That's the way things are for me," the round-faced lawyer said in an interview, smiling haplessly as if embarrassed by his fate. "It's been going on for the last two years."

As Beijing prepares to host the 2008 Olympic Games in August, the grinding controls imposed by the Chinese government on Zheng and other civil rights activists over the last decade are coming under growing scrutiny abroad.

China's security forces have extensive experience and little legal restriction in suppressing dissent. But domestic challenges to Communist Party rule are playing out today within a rising international debate over what place China's human rights record should have in the Olympics.

The Chinese government insists that the Games should have nothing to do with politics. Foreign activists, however, argue that the desire to celebrate athletic achievement should not be a reason for the world to ignore the dark side of Chinese policies.

President Bush, aligning with China's rulers, disagrees. He plans to attend the opening extravaganza Aug. 8. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has taken a similar position.

But since rioting erupted in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, on March 14, international concern has swelled, in particular over the fate of Tibetans. President Nicolas Sarkozy of France responded by saying a boycott of the Olympics opening ceremony is worth considering. The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, announced she is staying away. As part of her presidential campaign, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) suggested Monday that Bush should follow suit, citing China's conduct regarding Tibet and the Sudanese region of Darfur.

Little mentioned in the debate are the daily challenges -- from monitoring to arrest -- risked by Zheng and any of China's 1.3 billion residents if they challenge the party line.

Just months before the Olympics, all of a sudden, world leaders are showing great concern about human rights in China.

It's as if the West hasn't been paying attention.

Google had no problem getting into bed with China and being the government's accomplice in heavy-handed censorship. That deal was two years ago. Yahoo and Microsoft also chose to compromise principles for profit.

There certainly weren't widespread calls to boycott Google or Yahoo or Microsoft. Did Sarkozy, Merkl, or Hillary Clinton refuse to use their products or services because they're enablers of China's censorship?

Back in April 2006, when Chinese President Hu Jintao visited the U.S., he was met with some protests.

While visiting the state of Washington, supporters of the Falun Gong blasted protests about China's human rights violations from sound trucks into Hu's hotel. The protesters also gathered at Microsoft's headquarters.

Other protesters congregated outside the White House gates with signs and banners noting the issues of China's various atrocities, and its policies on Tibet and Taiwan.

Those protests were minor and easily managed by the Chinese thought police. However, one protester did manage a high profile disruption of Hu's carefully orchestrated visit.

Dr. Wang Wenyi interrupted a ceremony on the White House South Lawn when she screamed about China's persecution of Falun Gong practitioners.

Wang, a physician and a Falun Gong practitioner, said that it was the atrocities being committed by the Chinese government, particularly live organ harvesting, that prompted her protest.

According to Wang, there are concentration camps in China. The communist government and their operatives have incarcerated at least 200,000 people. They've committed no crimes. They are innocent; yet according to Dr. Wang, no one comes out of the labor camps alive.

She notes that between 2001 and 2003, thousands of Falun Gong practitioners have been victimized.

On the Internet organs are advertised as being available within two weeks. Anyone even vaguely familiar with people waiting for transplants knows that it can take years to find a suitable match. It's impossible to guarantee an organ so quickly, unless there is an organ farm available.

These innocent people are held in facilities and their blood types and tissue types are documented and kept in a database. When someone comes looking to buy a kidney or a heart, the Chinese communists simply kill an individual to get that person's organs. They commit murder and they sell the parts of that human being. Obviously, these killers are drawing from a very large pool to be able to provide suitable matches.

In addition to this organ harvesting, men and women are routinely executed for the practice of Falun Gong.

At the time, Wang's protest received relatively little attention from the mainstream press.

Months after her protest, in November 2006, WorldNetDaily reported that Wang Wenyi was right.

Following years of denial, China has acknowledged that foreigners who can pay more than native Chinese have been given preference for organ transplants and that "donors" for the operation have often been executed prisoners.

WND reported in 2004 charges by the banned Falun Gong group – backed up by Chinese doctors and human rights experts – that the communist government was torturing prisoners, executing them and trafficking in their body parts.

This week, at a summit for transplant doctors held in Guangzhou, the once-denied practice was confirmed by government officials.

"Apart from a small portion of traffic victims, most of the organs from cadavers are from executed prisoners," said Vice Health Minister Huang Jiefu, according to English-language China Daily newspaper. "The current organ donation shortfall can't meet demand."

A ministry spokesman also said that "wealthier people, including foreign patients" were able to move to the top of waiting lists ahead of others waiting for organs.

...The announcement at the Guangzhou summit followed the adoption of new rules in July for transplants. Under these regulations, foreigners would only be eligible for transplants per internationally recognized standards. The 1 million Chinese already on waiting lists would be given priority, and organ donations, even from prisoners, would be with the donor's consent.

The rules also forbid "organ trading" – paying live donors for organs that are removed and then transported outside China for transplant.

The Communist Chinese were harvesting human organs and selling them at bargain prices.

Chinese prisoners, including political prisoners, were executed and their organs were used in transplants.

The Chinese didn't deny this anymore. They admitted to the practice.

Where was the international outrage over this barbarism?

Did those calling for a boycott of the opening ceremonies of the Olympics complain about the Chinese government's execution of thousands and the extraction of their organs for transplants?

Why did it take those leaders planning to sit out the opening ceremonies in Beijing so long to come to the conclusion that there are serious human rights violations in China?

Why are China's sins being put in the spotlight now?

Does it really come as a surprise to anyone that the host country of the 2008 Olympics doesn't have a great record on human rights?

A gesture like boycotting the Olympic opening ceremonies is way too little way too late.
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An editorial today in the New York Times declares:

Nobody expected China to democratize overnight, and, given the country’s mighty economic power, nobody really wants to antagonize Beijing. But a nation that applies to host the Olympic Games also must demonstrate that it is worthy of the honor. China has only itself to blame for messing up its coming-out party.

No.

The blame rests on the Olympic Committee for bestowing China with the honor of hosting the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.

China clearly demonstrated that it was not worthy of that honor. The decision was announced on July 31, 2001.

I guess the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 were forgotten. If not forgotten, the Chinese government's response was forgiven.