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Beijing Olympics Slogan is "One World, One Dream" but Millions in China Experience "Different World, Different Dream"
By Lu Zhenyan
(Clearwisdom.net) There is a cute slogan for the 2008 Beijing Olympics:
"One World, One Dream." This might lead people to believe that the
Beijing Olympics conform appropriately with the Olympic spirit, which promotes
"mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair
play." Unfortunately the truth is a far cry from these noble goals set
forth in the Olympic Charter over one hundred years ago. In fact, precisely because of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, a large number
of Chinese citizens are designated as belonging to a "different world"
by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The human rights they enjoy are therefore
vastly fewer than those enjoyed by rest of the civilized world, and their dream
is certainly not the same as the CCP's. Because of the Beijing Olympic Games, millions of Falun Gong practitioners
have been classified as part of this different world. China's Public Security
Bureau has passed down new orders to "increase the intensity of the
crackdown on Falun Gong" with the goal of "before the 2008 Olympics,
all Falun Gong adherents need to be detained." Why? Because the CCP fears
that practitioners will clarify the truth about the persecution of
Falun Gong to visiting Olympic media, spectators and athletes. The CCP has no
greater fear than that of the truth being revealed, something the public in
China rarely hears, not to mention how China misrepresents itself to the outside
world. Since last August, the one-year-out point for the Beijing Olympics, in
Beijing's Shunyi District alone, more than 20 Falun Gong practitioners have been
forcibly arrested without due process of the law. These are just the known
cases. The arrests were concentrated in areas where the Olympics will be staged. Close to 2000 arrests have been documented around China since the beginning
of the New Year, all reflecting the CCP policy to round up and stamp out Falun
Gong before the Olympics. While Beijing loudly proclaims "One World, One Dream," a large
number of the innocent adherents of Falun Gong are being held in detention
centers, prisons, and brainwashing centers (which in the CCP's Orwellian
doublespeak are often mis-named "legal education classes"). They are
relegated to a different world -- a dark world without freedom. For
refusing to renounce their faith, many are tortured mercilessly with electric
batons, too many even have their organs removed, custom-killed to make way for
huge profits for their corrupt Party captors. For these Falun Gong
practitioners, their world and their dreams are certainly not the same as those
heralded by the Olympic slogan. While Beijing loudly proclaims "One World, One Dream," millions of
migrant peasant workers who perform arduous labor at the construction sites of
the Beijing Olympic venues are also relegated to a different world. As rural
dwellers, China's migrant workers are born to a lower life because of China's
household registration system. They have no rights to reside or go to school in
the cities where they toil so arduously. In the eyes of the CCP, they are
closely associated with "filthiness, mess, inferiority" and
"instability." Hence, during the period of the Olympic Games, they
will not be allowed to be in Beijing -- unless they can obtain
"permission to Beijing," a legal status granted by the government
above the county level. The CCP knocked down at least 50 schools for the
children of migrant workers as early as 2006 as part of plans for a display of
China's prosperity during the Olympic Games. For these migrant workers, their
world and their dreams are also far cries from those heralded by the slogan for
Games. While Beijing loudly proclaims "One World, One Dream," peasants in
Hebei and Shanxi short of water are also relegated to a different world by the
CCP. Because of the Olympic Games, these two drought-hit provinces have
transported huge amounts of their limited water supplies to Beijing, and they
will again have to transport 300 million cubic meters of water to Beijing in
2008. Why? Because it's needed to construct the Olympic theme park and to
"wash and clean [Beijing's] polluted and smelly rivers, canals and lakes in
order to display a clean, environmentally friendly face to Olympic
visitors." Hebei province has suffered from drought for 11 consecutive
years. A severe drought now threatens some 13,000 square miles (3.3 million
hectares) of cultivated farmland, 250,000 people are severely short of drinking
water. Per capita water resources in Shanxi are only about the level of 17
percent of the country. The province is already extremely dry, groundwater is
seriously over-drilled, and many local wells have to go down to nearly 1,000
meters to get water. All this while Beijing sings loudly "One World, One
Dream" and CCP media report, "Farmland in Hebei suffers from severe
drought, but Olympic officials say Olympic water supply will not be
affected". For the peasants who live on drought-hit cracked farmland and
those who can't find enough water to drink, their world and their dreams are
certainly not the same. In April last year, the Ministry for Public Security sent a secret
announcement to public security departments all over China, "a notice about
carrying out strict background checks on the applicants to the Olympic Games and
test events". This document listed 11 international and domestic categories
and 43 kinds of people to be excluded from the Olympic Games, including what the
CCP labels as "ideologically important people", "Falun Gong
practitioners", "those who are dissatisfied with the CCP and the
government", "those who file lawsuits against CCP authorities in
foreign countries" and so on and so forth. These people are also relegated
to a different world by the CCP. They include detained journalists, writers,
lawyers who dared to take on the CCP, peasants displaced by CCP land-grabs,
"relocated" people, reservoir migrants, and more. Their world and
their dreams, too, are certainly not the same as the CCP's. The "different world" and the "different human rights"
forced upon people by the CCP are a desecration of the Olympic spirit and an
insult to the countless people affected. China's people are looking forward to
an Olympic Games that can make the Chinese nation stand up proudly and stand
firm in the world. However, the CCP has been making use of hosting the Olympic
Games to force many Chinese to lie down at its feet in order to make it look
good. If Chinese people want the Beijing Olympic Games to truly embody the Olympic
spirit, the CCP is going to have to step out of the way. With over 33 million
Chinese people having renounced their membership in the CCP and its affiliates
in recent years, and the total rising upwards of 50,000 more per day, that's not
as far-fetched an idea as it once may have seemed. |