China has broken its promises on human rights and will now censor Olympic reporters. Should we still be going?

Question

In 2001 China agreed to many terms in order to win the right to host the 2008 Olympic Games.

They agreed to discontinue their policy of imprisoning human rights activists, stop censorship of the media during the games, and allow foreign reporters full and uncensored internet access.

China has broken most of these promises and today announced that it will reverse its most important promise to allow foreign reporters full and uncensored access to the media and internet.

It was also announced this week that China has failed to keep its promises and by most measures human rights violations have INCREASED, particularly in the last few months, as China has been attempting to silence protesters before the start of the games.

Should we reward this behavior by unconditionally sending our President to attend the games?

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080730011912.msb260uf&show_article=1

http://www.cbc.ca/olympics/story/2008/07/29/amnesty-beijing-olympics-report.html?ref=

Answer 1

How do you spell:

"No, but will it matter ; as long as selfish leaders are in power, no one will think straight, perhaps not idealisticially, but at least with a clear head?"

Answer 2

We never should have gone in the first place.

Answer 3

My feeling is that the Olympics should have never been held in a country that has such problems with human rights.  Since they are being held there I don't believe that any of the free nations of the world should attend!

Answer 4

to not go would only hurt the athletes.

everyone knows that this olympics is fully tainted with the blood of the chinese.  they can try to hide that fact as much as they want, but they simply cannot contain it.

Answer 5

Athletes from all nations competing against each other to determine who is the best in the world is a wonderful thing.

Our previous boycott, and the retaliatory boycott of the Los Angeles games, for lack of a better term, sucked.

I very much disagree with politicizing the games.

Disagreement with a nation's policies should be expressed in other ways.

One of those ways is for the President of the country that is supposedly the champion of freedom to refuse to attend. Actually, I think that no representative of the United States Government should attend the games as a protest.

That won't happen though - they've got suites in the best hotels, reservations in the best restaurants, sky-boxes at the best Olympic venues and are generally going to get pampered and spoiled.

Our leaders are, for the most part, small minded, selfish punks that will kiss the Chinese government's *** in anticipation of lining their and their friends' pockets.

There is no way that Little George is going to give up VIP seating, awesome Chinese food and getting drunk with his buddies every night to support the ideal of a free society. h**l, I don't even think he understands the concepts involved.

"d**n this is good chicken Laura, get me another one of them funny named beers - yeeee haaaa".

*sighs in disgust*

Answer 6

We should bombard their "spyware" with full-on p**n and freedom searches and we should hand out copies of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution to every Chinese citizen.

China shouldn't have gotten the Olympics, but the IOC (like the UN) is rife with corruption and payoffs.

Answer 7

If we don't go, the only people it will hurt are our athletes who have worked so hard to be there.  Staying home will not change a thing.  Our President should go to support our athletes.

Answer 8

We shouldn't have awarded them the Olympics in the first place.   Because of its government policies, China was an unfit host. To use the Olympics to try to cause social and political change in a country is abusing the purpose of the games.  Now that we awarded them the games, I think we should participate.  The president should make a point to not attend the games, but we shouldn't pull out of the Olympics.