The Winter Olympics: A moral barometer for the civilized world
This is part 1 of The Christian Post's series on China's human rights abuses under the spotlight of the Olympic Games. Read part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6 and part 7.
The International Olympic Committee (I.O.C.) should never have awarded the Winter Olympics to Beijing, given the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) scandalous and reprehensible human rights record. After having done so, the increasingly repressive and totalitarian actions of the CCP should have caused the Olympics to be moved to a more civilized venue that has at least some respect for basic human rights.
Now, however, it is too late (the Olympics begin Feb. 4) to move the Games. So, what should the civilized community of nations (which under any meaningful definition explicitly does not include Communist China) do now?
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Unfortunately, we can count on the I.O.C. to do whatever craven things are necessary to protect the CCP since they appear hopelessly compromised by Chinese largess. The I.O.C. has turned itself into ethical pretzels defending the indefensible. As Yaqiu Wang, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, explains in The New York Times, “The I.O.C. keeps saying that it’s a politically neutral organization, and wants to stay out of politics. … But it entirely ignores the fact that it has always been used as a political tool by the Chinese government to legitimize its standing and its policies, including crimes against humanity in Xinjiang.”
In “gratitude” for the I.O.C.’s services, the Chinese government-owned broadcaster (China Central Television) inked a broadcasting deal estimated to be worth $550 million and “a sponsorship deal with the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba estimated to be worth $800 million.” Perhaps the most charitable interpretation of the I.O.C. that corresponds to reality is that they are the equivalent of the CCP’s mistress.
So, the question some are asking is, “Should we boycott the Olympiad to protest the CCP’s criminal behavior?" The Christian Post believes that would be grossly unfair to the athletes from all over the world who have trained so diligently for years preparing to compete at this highest level. After all, the athletes have done nothing wrong, and they should not be punished for the irresponsibility, amorality, and avarice of their respective governments.
The various governments of the world, including our own, have placed their athletes in a precarious and unnecessary position by not moving the Games away from totalitarian China.
When our athletes travel to China, they have been warned in advance by the Chinese government (without a whisper of protest from the spineless, invertebrate I.O.C.) not to speak against “Chinese laws and regulations,” and if they do so, they will face “certain punishment,” according to Yang Shu, deputy director-general of Beijing's 2022 international relations department.
At a Jan. 18 forum hosted by Human Rights Watch, Olympian athletes expressed deep concern for the perils facing our athletes. One Olympic veteran, Noah Huffman, discouraged Olympians from speaking out against the Chinese government’s human rights abuses prior to the Games, lest they be denied entry into China.
Australia, Holland, the United Kingdom and the United States are some of the nations that have recommended that their athletes not take their laptops, cell phones and other electronic devices with them when they travel to China because of fears that sophisticated Chinese electronic surveillance will compromise their personal and sensitive information. Can anyone say, “police state”?
Given the Chinese government’s track record of trampling human rights, should anyone be surprised by their egregious behavior?
The Chinese Communist government has revealed itself to be perhaps the closest thing to the reincarnation of the Third Reich that the world has seen since that barbarous, demonic regime was blasted into oblivion in 1945. And that comparison is anything but hyperbole. In fact, it might be an understatement.
For starters, the Chinese Communist government is committing genocide against the Uyghurs (a Muslim ethnic minority) of approximately 12 million people heavily concentrated in the western province of Xinjiang.
It's been estimated that over 1 million residents of China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region have been detained in internment camps for the alleged purpose of "re-education" and "de-radicalization." Those who have fled the region have spoken of the horrors of forced abortions and torture. There is no doubt that the impetus for this crime against humanity started at the very top of the CCP food chain.
Former British Conservative Party leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith reported, according to the anti-communist Epoch Times, “that in a number of speeches back in 2014, President Xi drove his authorities to carry out the genocide that is going on among the Uyghur."
The CCP has also targeted other disfavored groups for persecution, including Christians, Falun Gong, Muslims, Tibetans and all pro-democracy dissidents (such as residents of Hong Kong who vigorously protested the suppression of the rights to free speech and freedom of assembly they were guaranteed when the U.K. signed Hong Kong back to China in 1997). Nothing is more symbolic of this political suppression than the dismantling of the statue at the University of Hong Kong memorializing those victims of the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989.
Furthermore, there is a great deal of evidence that the CCP has a large-scale operation illicit business in harvesting and selling organs forcibly and lethally removed from the victims of their crimes against humanity. Members of the European Parliament’s Subcommittee on Human Rights have unearthed evidence that has convinced them that the communist government of China is practicing forced organ harvesting on an “industrial scale” with perhaps a billion-dollar profit annually.
Further evidence of this heinous practice is provided by the fact that China has become a prime source of transplant tourism. This has caused several state legislatures to pass resolutions urging residents not to go to China for organ transplants. In Texas, just this past June, the state legislature passed a resolution urging Texans not to avail themselves of Chinese transplanted organs lest they “unwittingly” involve themselves “in murder.” The mass media’s failure to shine a much brighter light on this ghoulish and grisly state crime by the Chinese government is a scandal verging on criminal malfeasance.
Perhaps the most macabre aspect of these crimes was reported last July by Reuters. They reported that BGI Group (a Chinese gene company) was marketing prenatal tests on a global scale and that these tests were being used “to collect genetic data from millions of women for sweeping research on the traits of populations.”
This vast “gene bank,” analyzed and sifted with artificial intelligence, could give the CCP information that would enable it to lead the world in pharmaceutical research. Most alarming, however, is Reuters' conclusion that BGI and the Chinese military-industrial complex have as the main goal to “improve population quality” and the creation of a biologically superior population. Such goals are eerily reminiscent of the worst excesses of the Third Reich’s dark and evil genetic fantasies.
Ironically, the CCP is also using slave labor to produce many products, including, in all probability, souvenir clothing and other items to be sold at this Winter’s Olympiad.
For all these reasons, and more, Communist China should be considered an international pariah among the family of nations. The fact that it is not is a moral indictment of the civilized world.
In light of all these factors, The Christian Post recommends that, at this late date, athletes go and compete and wait until their return to the U.S., at which point they will be free to exercise their right to freedom of speech as their consciences guide them to do so, without governmental interference.
We also strongly encourage our readers to join Laura Ingraham’s “Not One Minute” campaign and boycott NBC’s coverage of the Winter Olympiad. We will leave it to your individual consciences as to how strictly you choose to adhere to calls to boycott the U.S. corporations that are advertising and subsidizing these Olympic Games.
In the following days, The Christian Post will be publishing interviews with those victimized by the CCP, as well as further exposés of the massive violations of basic human rights, which continue on an ongoing basis in Communist China.
And let us all covenant together to pray for all those being victimized in the new Asian Third Reich.
And let us all pray for the safety and divine watch care over all the athletes as they prepare to travel to, and compete in, this country which is so firmly in the grasp of such comprehensive totalitarianism. Let us all pray that none of the athletes will be injured as they demonstrate the discipline and tenacity with which they have honed their divinely given athletic prowess.
Dr. Richard Land, BA (Princeton, magna cum laude); D.Phil. (Oxford); Th.M (New Orleans Seminary). Dr. Land served as President of Southern Evangelical Seminary from July 2013 until July 2021. Upon his retirement, he was honored as President Emeritus and he continues to serve as an Adjunct Professor of Theology & Ethics. Dr. Land previously served as President of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (1988-2013) where he was also honored as President Emeritus upon his retirement. Dr. Land has also served as an Executive Editor and columnist for The Christian Post since 2011.
Dr. Land explores many timely and critical topics in his daily radio feature, “Bringing Every Thought Captive,” and in his weekly column for CP.
