The guru of Hollywood directors, Steven Spielberg, may terminate his position of artistic advisor in the 2008 Olympics Games over Beijing's continuing financing of the Darfur genocide.
A spokesman for Spielberg says the director intended to continue applying pressure on the Chinese regime to change its policies, and is ruling nothing out—including withdrawal from his unpaid position as artistic adviser.
"Steven will make a determination in the next few weeks regarding his work with the Chinese. Our main interest is ending the genocide. No one is clear on the best way to do this," Mr Spielberg's spokesman Andy Spahn told abcnews.com in an article on its Web site.
The Hollywood icon has come under international criticism for not doing enough to pressure Beijing, which is accused of selling arms to the Sudanese Government.
Many of the weapons are believed to end up in the hands of the Arab militia who have slaughtered at least 200,000 men, women and children. Some 2.5 million people have become displaced as a result of the atrocities in the north-African country.
In a March Wall Street Journal editorial titled "Genocide Olympics", fellow Hollywood star and activist Mia Farrow has attacked Spielberg, comparing him to the Nazi Germany film director Leni Riefenstahl, who glorified the 1936 Berlin Olympics in the film Olympia.
"That so many corporate sponsors want the world to look away from that atrocity during the Games is bad enough," wrote Ms Farrow.
"But equally disappointing is the decision of artists like director Steven Spielberg, who quietly visited China this month as he prepares to help stage the Olympic ceremonies—to sanitize Beijing's image."
However, four days after the Ms Farrow's broadcast, a letter was issued by Spielberg, condemning the killings in Darfur and urging Chinese President Hu Jintao to use his influence in the region to bring an end to the human suffering.
"I believe there is no greater crime against humanity than genocide...I add my voice to those who ask that China change its policy toward Sudan and pressure the Sudanese Government to accept the entrance of United Nations peacekeepers to protect the victims of genocide in Darfur," he wrote in the letter, published by the National Public Radio.
Spielberg has earned a reputation of one if the more socially-conscious Hollywood celebrities, after filming his Oscar-winning Holocaust epic Schindler's List.
Following the success of the 1994 drama, he set up the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, producing over 50,000 video-taped testimonies of Holocaust survivors.
This year, his foundation announced that it will extend its education mission, by turning its attention to recording eye-witness reports of genocide in Rwanda, Darfur and Cambodia, as well as stories of life under apartheid in South Africa.
Meanwhile, the United Nations Human Rights Committee on Friday, July 17, called on Sudan to halt and prosecute war crimes in Darfur and ensure no support reached militias carrying out ethnic cleansing.
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