boycotting Olympic opening ceremony

international | rights, freedoms and repression | opinion/analysis

Wednesday August 06, 2008 11:10

by brendan butler - ngo peace alliance

brendan13 at eircom dot net

Everyone can by switching off their tvs

The NGO Peace alliance is joined woth the International Committee of Human rights -Swiss section to encourage people who do not wish to be represented by their governmwent represenratives to use their own personal initiative and join up and register with with www.boycottceremony.com

On Friday at 13.00 Irish time the grand opening ceremony of the Olympic Games wiil take place at which most governments will be represented including our own by Minister Martin Cullen. President George Bush will rub shoulders with Robert Mugabe and Cuban president Raul Castro on a common platform to applaud the Chines leadership's hosting of the Olympic games. Forgotten are the massacre of Tianaman Square ,the continuing rape of Tibet , the military support of President Bahir of Sudan recently indicted by the International criminal court for genocide in Darfur and its arming of the repressive regime in Burma. However what world governments ,the International Olympic Committee and their multinational sponsors are deliberately shutting their eyes to is the endemic repression by the Chinese Communist party of its own people. No dissent is allowed and just last April Hu Jia was sentenced to 3.5 years in prison for speaking out against the Olympics and Yang Chulin detained for his involvement ina petition 'We want human rights not the Olympics'.The parents of children killed in their shoddily built school during the Sichuan earthquake have been detained for their public outcry as witnessed by John Sweeney in His BBC Panorama programme this week.
We are not protestint against the participation of Irish Athletes in the games but we would be delighted if anyone registered their support for the protection of human rights in China and throughout its empire.
Martin Cullen ,our Minister for Sports maintains vert smugly that sports and human rights don't mix but that is an excuse for his blind accepance of an amorality which declares that politics , sports and business are not to be judged by ordinary right and wrong but are immune from from any ethical judgement.
However each one os can dissociate ourselves from this cow towing to the economic might of the new Empire by simply not viewing the opening ceremony on your T.V.
Give a small boost to human rights by switching off .