Canadian 'Awareness Week' Prepares for Human Rights Torch Arrival

A torch relay that is more than a little different from the Beijing 2008 Olympics relay is gradually making its way around the world.

The Human Rights Torch Relay, which lit its first flame in Athens on August 9, has just arrived in Sweden, where it will stop at several cities including Oslo and Stockholm.

As it proceeds, the torch will travel to more than 150 cities on five continents, bringing with it the message that "Olympics and crimes against humanity cannot co-exist in China."

In the lead up to the arrival of the torch in Canada next May, as part of World Human Rights Torch Awareness Week from October 21-28, several cities will host a variety of events aimed at exposing the Chinese regime's human rights violations.

Throughout the week, information tables will be provided at universities across the country so that student clubs can get involved, and on October 28, Toronto will hold a rally, a walk-a-thon and a concert.

The walk will depart from in front of the Chinese Consulate on St. George Street at 1 pm and proceed to Dundas Square at Yonge and Dundas. Speeches and an open-air concert will take place in the afternoon at Dundas Square, followed by a showing of the movie Good and Evil at 7 pm, also at Dundas Square.

The organizers of the relay, the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (CIPFG), welcome individuals to speak at the rally and be an "ambassador for humanity."

Besides Canada, the awareness week and related events will also take place in the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, and several countries in Asia and Europe.

The Human Rights Torch Relay is an international campaign to bring an end to all human rights atrocities in China, including the repression of journalists, Tibetan Buddhists, religious leaders, and democracy advocates.

The relay also highlights ongoing abuses of adherents of Falun Gong, a spiritual meditation practice that has experienced an unprecedented level of persecution and genocide since 1999.

"I hope that the torch relay is going to keep the spotlight on Beijing until the Olympics in August, and embarrass them and hopefully cause them to pull back on some of these heinous practices of theirs," says CIPFG president Clive Ansley.

"I think minimally we would hope to publicize the nature of the Beijing regime and specifically the evidence of organ theft—of killing people for their organs." Ansley is referring to the investigative report, Bloody Harvest, in which co-authors Hon. David Kilgour and human rights lawyer David Matas outline evidence that Falun Gong prisoners of conscience are being killed on demand to supply the lucrative organ transplant industry in China.

Ex-parliamentarian Kilgour, who is accompanying the human rights torch as it continues its journey from Stockholm to its next stop in Helsinki and then on to Dublin, says it's important to keep the pressure on Beijing in the approach to the Games if change is to come about.

"The more pressure the world can apply during the coming months the better for the people of China, including the most persecuted Falun Gong community, and abroad in places like Burma, Darfur and Zimbabwe." The awareness week will focus on the three main points CIPFG has called for: end the persecution of Falun Gong immediately and release all practitioners; end the persecution of friends, supporters and defense lawyers of Falun Gong practitioners (e.g. Gao Zhisheng, Li Hong); and open up labour camps, prisons, hospitals and related secretive facilities for inspection by CIPFG independent investigators. CIPFG maintains the "true Olympic spirit" has been violated by giving the Games to a repressive regime such as the CCP, and is calling for a boycott of the Games if the regime doesn't work to improve human rights in China—something it promised to do when awarded the Olympics in 2001.

In fact, rights groups allege that not only have human rights not improved, but have actually taken a marked downturn since Beijing was initially awarded the Olympics.

Ansley, who is the China country monitor for Lawyers Rights Watch Canada, says there has been a recent "massive campaign" against human rights lawyers and advocates who are being intimidated, beaten, arrested, tortured, and having their law license taken away.

"It's a real campaign to intimidate anybody in the legal profession who has the courage to speak out against the abuses," says Ansley, who practised marine law in China for 14 years. Rights groups report that in the weeks approaching the 17th Party Congress which started Monday, an unusually harsh crackdown has seen hundreds of petitioners, democracy activists, religious figures and human rights advocates abducted, imprisoned or placed under house arrest.

Judy Tethong of the Canada Tibet Committee says the only positive thing about Beijing being given the Olympics is that the international spotlight is increasingly beaming on China and "exposing the dirt."

"The Tibetan movement is totally against China having the Olympics, they don't deserve it for all kinds of reasons, the most recent being the situation in Burma," says Tethong.

Tibet has figured prominently in China's "Olympics-related public relations strategy," says the Tibetan movement, which has protested China's plans to bring the Olympic torch to the summit of Tibet's Mt. Everest and using the Tibetan antelope as an official mascot.

"They have really made "happy Tibet" central to the whole theme of the Olympics…it makes my blood boil" says Tethong.

Ansley says previous Olympics became "propaganda bonanzas" for dictatorial regimes such as the Nazis in 1936 and the Soviets in 1980, and that the Beijing Games are being exploited by the CCP to improve China's image in the eyes of the international community.

"They have absolutely gone overboard to burnish their image," he says, adding that Beijing's motivation for applying for the Olympics has been "about politics and nothing else."

"They use it for that, and the International Olympic Committee refuses to do anything that is morally or ethically defensible in terms of dealing with broken promises regarding improving human rights if the regime got the Olympics."

Apart from the awareness week, there will be intermittent activities in various cities until the arrival of the torch in May, including a forum and a concert in Vancouver on December 8 to salute International Human Rights Day on December 10. Vancouver will also hold a Human Rights Information Day on December l.

Several cities and municipalities have issued proclamations declaring October 21-28 "Human Rights in China Awareness Week."

Additional reporting by Brett Price in Victoria