China Can't Hold a Torch to Olympic Standards
Tony Perkins, FRC Washington Update: China may have agreed to start talking about human rights, but getting officials to act on them is an entirely different matter. In the last year, hundreds of church leaders have been brutally arrested and detained. Others have been sent to remote labor camps, where the regime plans to "reeducate" them on matters of faith. However, as the situation worsens in China and more Christians are persecuted, the U.S. is letting the opportunity to demand better behavior slip away on the eve of the Beijing Olympic Games. Rather than leverage the influence of the international community to pressure the Chinese to clean up their act, the State Department has taken an unusually mild approach to the scores of human rights violations perpetrated by China. Just months before Beijing takes the global stage as host of the 2008 Games, China is absent from the list of the world's most "systematic human rights violators" in the latest U.S. report. Instead, the Chinese were listed with other nations which "continue to deny citizens basic human rights." The administration's position undermines human rights advocates around the world who see the Olympics as a chance to prod China to end its cycle of abuse. Now the State Department seems more intent on befriending the Chinese than spotlighting their legacy of violence and oppression--a legacy that FRC has repeatedly asked the Department to address. Our December letter, and that of a dozen congressmen, which called for U.S. intervention in the case of 21 captive pastors, continues to go unanswered by the administration. We haven't received so much as a generic reply on the matter. China has not earned this rhetorical detente, and the apparent concessions in this year's human rights report are unwarranted. See Also: The Future of Freedom in the People's Republic of ChinaTags: China, Christians, FRC, Olympics, persecution, Tony Perkins To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!
Posted by Bill Smith at 10:00 PM - Post Link
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