Organizations are starting to petition many nations to boycott the next olympic games and rightly so to be honest. While most are small organizations and many are already anti-RED China their is a geniune cause underaneth the political motivations.
For me the one event of my youth that left a major impact was Tiananmen Square. Unlike many I saw it live via a PBS feed (or at least I think it was a PBS feed...cable was still a bastard child then) and with the time diffrence I first thought it was some sort of TV show. I remember asking my parents to change the channel to tell me what the hell this was. As I watched I found out exactly what it was and thanks to THAT feed I saw the uncensored truth of it all. While the famous image of the man standing in front of a Tank was all over the place the resulting massacre made it into few TV station news hours.
This was in in June of 89 and while it is still remembered in some circles it seems sick and hypocritical for ANY Western nation to send teams to Olympic Games hosted by one of the most repressive and violent governments on the planet. Unlike other natiosn China does not hide the human rights abuses all that well. I love the country and it's people with all my heart but I can't see how an event like the Olympics can be allowed in such place...especially in Beijing.
It goes against what the Olympics are suppose to be about and while politics are suppose to be set aside...it seems sad that so many tourists and their money will be parted in a place that massacred students and workers fighting for the same rights said tourists have.
It's going to be quite interesting how the spectre of Tiananmen Square hangs over these particular games...and if any new protests arise since they are the PERFECT event for such uprisings...but with so much western intrest in making MONEY off the chinese in spite of their repression and human rights abuses...I have little hope for something positive to happen.
One can only hope that SOME nation or Athelete makes mention of the events and that the Square itself is acknowledged in some way...too many died their for the eye of the world to ignore it again...especially that this will be the first time since then that so many from all over the world will be there. It'll be interesting to say the the least...
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