I read a story a while ago, regarding the Chinese way of petitioning the central government regarding grievances the people may have with local officials.  I don’t remember in what medium or at what time I read the article, but it did highlight a certain trade that has sprung up, which aims to inhibit the Chinese people from being able to even reach the central government offices in order to submit a petition.

In attempts to limit the ability of the petitioner to file, thugs, basically, were hired to intercept said petitioners before they ever made it close to the filing offices.  Recently however, the Chinese government is taking it upon themselves to openly hire these thugs to stop the thousands of petitioners who go to Beijing.  As the AP reports, such swarms of protesting people would undermine China’s attempt to show off their country as a modern, upscale, “with-it” society.  What I think the Chinese government doesn’t quite understand is that they’re coming across just about as modern as an old-school mafia.

The Eastern Chinese people are largely Muslim, and they number into the millions.  Throughout China’s history these peoples have always been striving for independence, though their methods are terroristic in nature and therein their efforts, and those organizations behind such efforts, have been certified as terrorist organizations by the U.N. and U.S.  While I don’t disagree with this I do disagree with how the Chinese government has exploited this.

In attempts to trump up their security efforts ahead of the Olympics, citing that these Eastern Chinese Muslim groups are planning to attack the Olympic games, the Chinese have published ‘news,’ through their state controlled news agency Xinhua or something like that, depicting how the Chinese Security Forces have thwarted recent attacks against these groups.  Obviously by showing that they can take care of it now, they sure should be able to take care of it at the Olympics.

The problem however rises when these Eastern groups actually claim that they never carried out any attacks, that the Chinese Government is just making it up, and in this case one would be inclined to believe them.  Recently the government published their great security efforts by citing an attempted takeover of a plane, traveling between two cities in China, by its passengers.  The Chinese state that the plane landed just fine and suspicious liquids were taken off the plane.  Again the Chinese government shows their shear ineptitude.  Why not arrest the passengers? Or the weapons they used to surely ‘attempt’ to take over the plane?  Or did they use suspicious liquids for that?  Completely ridiculous.

Why are we going to these Olympics?  Because the Olympics is suppose to bring the various peoples of Earth together, but all it’s doing this year around is tearing the Chinese people apart, though, not by much more then they already are.  The Olympics as they are for this Summer, won’t have us all holding hands singing songs, rather it will have us divided - those who seek to compete in the games to and achieve Olympic gold, and those who will protest the games to seek Human Rights.  I challenge the athletes who are going to these games to tell us what’s more virtuous: going the Games and winning an Olympic Medal only because it happens every 4 years, or boycotting the Olympics in support of basic Human Rights and Freedoms.