Broken Chinese promises.

dane

When the news broke that Beijing would host the 2008 olympic games I was outraged. How could a totalitary suppressing regime like the chinese have this honor??!! But then I started looking on the bright side. Maybe this would be a good thing. Having thousands of journalists, athletes and tourists coming to the country might help speed up reforms. Maybe having thousands of journalists telling the world about what they see in China, would help put international pressure on China to start respecting basic human rights. Chinese officials even promised to start working on reforms and improve the "democracy".
But now - less than a week before the games begin - nothing has changed. In fact the conditions have worsened.
Hundreds of people has been made homeless when their houses were torn down to create new sportarenas and housing complexes. In the international press center, acces to certain webpages - Amnesty, BBC i.e. - were limited. This has now been resolved, but it says alot about the chinese government that they are actually even considering controlling the media and free flow of information.
China still has the death penalty. Lots of more or less democratic countries have this, but in China it's used against 68 kinds of crimes, including non-violent, such as embezzlement and drug related crime.
The local government in Beijing has issued an instruction on how the cities residents should behave during the olympic games. Among lots of other "instructions" it states that people shouldn't wear clothing with more different colors than 2, spitting is not allowed and people are requested not to shout or talk loudly in the streets.
WTF!!?? What kind of crazy country is this? What kind of mindset are you in when you as a leader feel the need to make these kind of rules? How can the international society allow the chinese government to keep up this way of ruling.
The IOC recently said that it would watch the human rights situation in China closely. Allthough it's positive that the IOC even speaks about this, it's an outrage that they haven't criticized the government more!
We should all be ashamed that we allowed the olympic games to be hosted by China and that we don't do anything to improve the current human rights situation. It makes me sad and angry.

I wonder what my sentence would be if I lived in China and had written this post. 5 years in a workcamp? 10 years? Maybe noone would ever hear from me again........?

http://www.amnesty.dk/log/D3476-da.doc

unsung

dane wrote:

China still has the death penalty. Lots of more or less democratic countries have this, but in China it's used against 68 kinds of crimes, including non-violent, such as embezzlement and drug related crime.


http://www.amnesty.dk/log/D3476-da.doc

I bet people are well behaved compared to here though. It is an extreme punishment, the most extreme, but here people get months at Club Fed for ripping off people's lifetime savings and pensions. I think our punishments should be more harsh.

I was set to give you the line of how much Chinese goods do you own but I'm not enlightened on where your country imports their goods from. People who sit here and claim China is the root of all evil are being hypocritical because they possibly shop at places like Wal-Mart where a very high amount of items sold come from China. See they will complain about the human rights violations but then when you tell them to spend a few more dollars buying Made in USA they forget all about where their item came from.

dane

unsung wrote:

I bet people are well behaved compared to here though. It is an extreme punishment, the most extreme, but here people get months at Club Fed for ripping off people's lifetime savings and pensions. I think our punishments should be more harsh.

I was set to give you the line of how much Chinese goods do you own but I'm not enlightened on where your country imports their goods from. People who sit here and claim China is the root of all evil are being hypocritical because they possibly shop at places like Wal-Mart where a very high amount of items sold come from China. See they will complain about the human rights violations but then when you tell them to spend a few more dollars buying Made in USA they forget all about where their item came from.

Well behaved!!?? I would mind my manners if I risked getting shot for smoking a reefer at a PJ show!!

I know what you mean about the import of chinese goods. However I believe that most ppl, in Denmark at least, are aware that many electronic components, toys and clothing comes from China.
But China - democratic or not - needs to be able to export their goods. Making import bans on chinese goods would only worsen living standards for the general population and make the government even less willing to do as we tell them.
In stead we need leaders with balls, that dare stand up say "Mr. chairman. Our country/company imports chinese goods worth x million dollars a year. We are really concerned that some of these goods has been produced using forced child labour!"
IMO the new investments being made i China are positive. However there's alot of companies that are only concerned with getting there piece of the cake and making money, instead of using their acces to the system to develop, influence and improve it.

flywallyfly

unsung wrote:

I was set to give you the line of how much Chinese goods do you own but I'm not enlightened on where your country imports their goods from. People who sit here and claim China is the root of all evil are being hypocritical because they possibly shop at places like Wal-Mart where a very high amount of items sold come from China. See they will complain about the human rights violations but then when you tell them to spend a few more dollars buying Made in USA they forget all about where their item came from.

Very true. My extended family has made a joke of it about how I wont step foot in Walmart because they just dont get it.