Drive down any road in America with a healthy twenty-something population and you’re certain to find yourself stopped behind a car with a bumper sticker reading “Free Tibet”. Fortunately (and unfortunately) for Tibetans, these ostentatious bumper stickers found on the vehicles of neo-hippy youth are no longer the only publicity their plight is receiving. After over 50 years under Chinese rule, the Olympics have finally provided an international lens under which we can review the oppressive Chinese control over this impossibly gorgeous chunk of earth. While Tibetan freedom is a trendy human rights issue, Chinese maltreatment of its own citizens should not be neglected, nor should China’s support for the Burmese military junta, and again, the Beijing Olympics provides a rare moment of consideration for these abuses.

While debating this issue, I’ve heard it argued that we should separate politics from the games. So if the Olympics were held in Darfur rather than Beijing, we should remain focused on the contenders in the 100-meter dash competition rather than the sanguinary devastation of its residents? Each year China sees literally tens of thousands of protests in the destitute and neglected countryside, should we not stand in solidarity with the workers against the government responsible? Or should we be standing behind buxom Swedish gymnasts and Canadian swimmers? With protests on such a large scale, the government, having control over the media, often, in order to preserve their Communist state, deliberately chooses to react violently. This isn’t okay, and we should be telling them that. Once again, enter Olympics. If we sit on the sidelines, we’re just as guilty as the leaders in China; and we’re also labeling ourselves with the same offensive brand that has been bestowed upon us by the international community over the last 8 years.

Living in a country with a PR problem as bad as America’s, it would behoove us to stand by our Western European allies and at least consider, as Sarkozy is, a boycott of the opening ceremony. The sight of Guantanamo George sitting this one out because of human rights abuses is the height of absurdity, but that’s the point. Perhaps the sheer hypocrisy will shed light on our own abuses in Cuba, Iraq, and everywhere we torture, prop up corrupt regimes, etc…

If our walking corporations political leaders won’t stand up for humanity, then we, as Americans (the human form) should. We owe it to ourselves to stand up when our leaders won’t. Our occasionally spineless Speaker, Pelosi gave a brilliant summation of this point:

The Olympic Charter states that the goal of the Olympic games should be to promote ‘a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity.’ The Chinese government has failed to live up to the commitments it made before being awarded the Olympic games to improve its human rights situation. In fact, there is disturbing new evidence that it is conducting a broader crackdown on human rights in China and Tibet because of the Olympics.

For the next four months, the International Olympic Committee and Chinese officials will parade the Olympic torch through dozens of countries and even through Tibet. The torch will be met by politicians and heads-of-state from all over the world along a ‘journey of harmony.’ It is the Chinese government that is making the Olympic torch relay a political event.

Freedom-loving people around the world are vigorously protesting because of the crackdown in Tibet and Beijing’s support for the regime in Sudan and the military junta in Burma. The people are making a significant statement that the Olympic ideals of peace and harmony should apply to all people, including those in Tibet and Darfur.

San Francisco is blessed by a large and vibrant Chinese American community. As San Franciscans, we embrace the diversity of our community and we value the contributions made in every corner of our great city. We also value free expression, and this week, many will exercise this right by demonstrating against the Olympic torch. I urge all those who protest to do so peacefully and respectfully. I commend those who speak out for their commitment to shining a light on the causes that challenge the conscience of the world.

In the opening paragraph I mentioned the trendiness of the Tibetan freedom cause. While that may have been true prior to the internationalization of this issue via the Olympics, now’s the time to leave our shallowness at home and get serious. Here, in America, we have to hold the usual suspects (corporations) accountable for their apathy to human rights abuses. McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, GE, Johnson and Johnson, are money whores just like the Chinese government, if we can’t do something about it here, then our Chinese endeavors are in vain.

Speaking of Chinese corporate corruption, don’t they also have a stake in not being the developed (sort of) world’s whipping boy? As their influence over production of, well, everything, is further concentrated into their hands, they have the incentive to run a PR campaign that doesn’t include killing its citizens.