Should the US boycott the Beijing Olympics?

I have the utmost respect for Chinese culture, esp. as that's where Korea gets a lot of its culture, including its Eastern medicine practice.

However, there are a lot of things about modern China that scare me, not least the environmental problems wrought by a rapidly industrializing country driven by economic concerns. But also, I was walking by a Falun Gong protest on campus and in NYC and picked up their literature. I practice chi gong myself (a generic term for exercises that move around your chi, or "spirit") and I can't see what the Falun Gong adherents are doing that's so threatening except that they are devoting themselves wholeheartedly and peacefully to a practice they believe in.

I think it behooves us to look into this issue a little more closely.

----------------------------

On August 3, Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, the Ranking Member on the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights and Oversight, introduced a House Resolution to boycott the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing.

He explained, "The Olympics represent the noblest elements of humanity and the Chinese regime represents the opposite. The Olympic torch is supposed to be a beacon of light shining upon mankind's higher aspirations in the world and it's a travesty to have that torch hosted by a regime that is the world's worst human rights abuser."

	Because she practiced Falun Gong, Ms. Wei Fengju was tortured to near death in the Heizuizi Forced labor Camp. Unable to recover, she passed away on July 11, 2007.

On March 28, 2007, actress Mia Farrow, a good-will ambassador for the United Nations Children's Fund, drew the world's attention to the Beijing Olympics when she and her son Ronan wrote an op-ed article for the Wall Street Journal [1]. In the article, Farrow launched a campaign to label the 2008 Olympics the "Genocide Olympics." Her forthright candor gave voice to the world's awakening shock at Communist China's ever-burgeoning atrocities, its total disregard for human values and its severe human rights violations.

Not only is China bankrolling Darfur's Genocide [2]; for more than eight years it has sought to eliminate Falun Gong, which in 1999 had an estimated 70 million practitioners in China; it has likewise abused democracy activists, lawyers, human rights defenders, religious leaders, journalists, trade unionists, Tibetan Buddhists, Uighurs, ''unofficial'' church members, and political dissidents.

----------------------------------------------
read more here.