ChinaBounder Weekender Part Three

BIG NEWS!

The Beijing Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games has asked ChinaBounder to provide a list of 10 ‘gold medal’ winners from among the many dissidents, victims, and visionaries who truly want change but have been beaten, jailed or executed by the Communist Chinese government.

No, not really -- but here are my suggestions.

1. Woeser. She’s a Tibetan poet. She writes about AIDS, the environment, and social problems. She wants to travel outside China. The Chinese government refuses to give her a passport. “If I really am posing a threat to society, doesn't it make the great country of China seem very weak?" she told the Associated Press recently. “I still have hope in China, which is such a strong nation," Woeser said. “I hope it will be strong enough to give me a little space." A champ!
   
   
2. Rebiya Kadeer. A Uighur businesswoman. She was arrested in 1999 for the ‘crime’ of sending newspaper clippings to her husband in the United States. She wants a peaceful solution to the occupation of her country, the area known as Xingjiang, by China. So she is reviled and abused by China. After six years in jail she was released and allowed to go to the States. Then the Chinese came after her sons, two of whom have received long jail terms on politically motivated charges. Kadeer continues to speak for her oppressed people.
   
   
3. Huang Qi. Recently he tried to help the parents of the thousands children who died in the recent earthquake. After speaking out about what happened in the quake he was arrested for ‘illegal possession of state secrets.’ Still under arrest, he’s been denied access to any legal representation. He was jailed previously, for five years, after writing online about the Tiananmen Square Massacre.
   
   
4. Hada. A Mongolian, he’s been in jail for more than a decade because he called for greater rights and freedoms for the people of Inner Mongolia. He also ran a bookshop selling books, in Mongolian, on Mongolian topics. Add the Mongolians to the list, with the Tibetans, the Uighurs – another minority oppressed, belittled and abused by the Han.
   
   
5. Mukhtar Setiwaldi and Abduweli Imin. This one is a posthumous gold medal, for Setiwaldi and Imin were recently executed by China. China said they were terrorists – not freedom fighters or resistance fighters against occupation. In China freedom is terrorism. They received a show trial, that still active remnant of authoritarian regimes from Nazi Germany to Stalinist Russia. Beijing invokes the specter of terrorism to sow hatred and fear of other ethnic peoples among the Han population, the same way the Nazis did to those of Jewish faith. The government can crush the people of those ethnic nations and the Han, normal Chinese citizens, will applaud when they do.
   
   
6. Hu Jia. He speaks out on AIDS, the environment, human rights and democracy. He’s in prison now, locked up for three and a half years because he wanted the leaders of his nation to do more about AIDS. The state came after his family. His wife lives under constant police harassment. That is the Chinese way – if you speak out you make your whole family a target.
   
   
7. The Dalai Lama. He has made it his life’s mission to call for a peaceful solution to the Tibet problem. The government constantly misrepresents him, spewing out lies and disinformation, misleading the people of China so that they believe he is a man of war, not peace. Does anybody disagree with this choice?
   
   
8. Sting, along with a range of other artists – not Chinese, but they wanna be. The ‘Songs for Tibet’ project gathers a group of internationally-famous singers and musicians to record an album to highlight the plight of the nation of Tibet. The album is proposed for release on August 5th. Songs of and for peace and harmony. China will spin it as ‘an attack on China,’ ‘meddling in internal affairs,’ ‘foreign machinations’ and so on. China will invent music terrorism.
   
   
   
9. Leung Kwok-hung. He’s a Chinese Hong Kong politician, often known as ‘Long Hair.’ He’s always been a man to speak with his own voice. He wanted to travel to Sichuan to learn more about the earthquake victims. He was banned from doing so. In the words of Leung himself: "It’s so ironic. People said the Olympic Games will make China more open up, I think it’s going backward." Leung, a socialist, truly believes in the things the Communist Party of China only pretends to believe in. That’s the real irony.
   
   

And now to No 10……………… and the answer is up to you. I challenge you to choose the 10th most worthy individual from China who may honorably receive gold. Post your selection in the comments box.

To help you out, a few more who have suffered under the hammer of communist rule: Du Daobin. Shi Tao. Wang Dan. Huang Liangtian. Sun Lin. Pang Jiaoming. Zhang Mingxuan. Gao Zhisheng. Bao Tong. Ma Jian. Yang Jianli. Wang Xiaoning. Liu Xiaobo. Wei Jingsheng. Jiang Yanyong. Zeng Hongling. Gao Yaojie. Chen Guangcheng.

There are many I have not even mentioned. Heroes who should be honored by China, but who will only receive abuse and contempt while the semi-fascist government holds sway.


Any students who wish to have a new experience and life-long memory as a protester for 60 seconds form a 'T' for Tibet and 'X' for Xinjiang and expect to get your ass booted.