U.S. Dept. of State - IIP: The United States and China

Text: Helms Decries IOC Decision to Give 2008 Olympics to Beijing
(Compares decision to giving Hitler's Germany 1936 Olympics)

The decision by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to award the 2008 Summer Olympic Games to Beijing drew scorn from the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Senator Jesse Helms (Republican of North Carolina) complained in a July 13 news release that the decision to hold the 2008 Olympics in Beijing flew in the face of the declared values of the Olympics, since the Beijing regime was one that "arbitrarily imprisons, tortures, murders and harvests the organs of its own people."

Helms compared awarding the Olympics to Beijing with decisions to hold the Olympics in Hitler's Germany and Leonid Brezhnev's Soviet Union.

HELMS CONDEMNS BEIJING SELECTION

"An Affront to Those Who Dare to Speak Up For Freedom in China"

WASHINGTON (July 13) -- Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC), Ranking Republican on the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee, made this comment in the wake of today's International Olympic Committee's decision to award the 2008 Olympic Games to Beijing:

The International Olympic Committee's decision awarding the 2008 Games to Beijing will be viewed by the Communist Chinese government as an endorsement of the government's repression of the Chinese people.

Despite the Olympic Charter's goal of fostering "respect for universal fundamental ethical principles," the IOC awarded its most prestigious event, the Summer Games, to a government that arbitrarily imprisons, tortures, murders and harvests the organs of its own people.

No rule of law exists in Communist China today, nor is there the slightest respect there for "universal fundamental ethical principles." Muslims, Christians and Tibetan Buddhists are hounded and oppressed by the rulers of the "People's Republic of China."

The IOC's decision is a not unexpected affront to all who dare to speak up for freedom in China. More than 100 Chinese dissidents and relatives of political prisoners signed an open letter in January asking the Beijing government to release all political prisoners. Five scholars with ties to the United States have been detained or arrested in China during the past year.

The U.S. State Department has warned Americans of Chinese descent, individuals with connections to Taiwan, and critics of the Chinese government not to travel to China. Beijing's selection by the IOC mocks the freedoms that Americans enjoy and have sought to bring to the rest of the world.

Will the Olympics change the Chinese government? We should remember Hitler's march into the Rhineland in 1935 and Brezhnev's invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, both of which occurred just before both dictators hosted the Olympic Games.

(Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)