Sunday, July 8, 2007

Alternative Torch Relay Exposes 'Bloody Olympics'

By John Smithies; Epoch Times UK Staff
Jul 08, 2007

Baroness Caroline Cox announces the Global Human Rights Torch Relay to Expose the 2008
Baroness Caroline Cox announces the Global Human Rights Torch Relay to Expose the 2008 "Bloody Olympics" at a press conference in London (Epoch Times)

An alternative Olympic torch is to make its way around the world to expose human rights abuses in China in the run-up to the Olympic Games in Beijing next year.

The Global Human Rights Torch Relay to Expose the 2008 "Bloody Olympics" will start on August 9th in Athens and take in more than 10 countries in Europe, before finishing in Asia.

Mr John Dee, one of the organisers of the Relay, said: "If China is allowed to host the next Olympics without first ending its morally corrupt human rights abuses, especially the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners, it will be a sad indictment on the moral standards of the world as a whole."

The Relay, which is supported by a number of past Olympic winners, aims to force the International Olympic Committee to take a serious look at its own charter, and to cancel the Games under the present circumstances.

"The Olympic Games have always been a symbol of high moral standards founded on the natural striving for the harmony of physical strength and spiritual force of human beings," said Mārtiņš Rubenis, Latvian Winter Olympics Bronze medal winner.

"As an athlete I could not feel the deep fulfilment and satisfaction of a job well done while standing on the podium, built over the lives of thousands and thousands of people," he said.

The Relay joins other initiatives being taken to draw attention to the CCP's continued human rights abuses.

In March, actress Mia Farrow announced a campaign to halt China's support of the Sudanese regime, which has so far killed more than 400,000 people in Darfur. Ms Farrow said that Beijing is uniquely positioned to put an end to the slaughter, but had so far refused to do so.

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