BERLIN—Over two weeks in August 1936, Nazi Germany painted a rosy picture to the world of peace and prosperity during the Berlin Summer Olympics.
Outside the same Olympic Stadium, human rights activists last Saturday called for a boycott of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, as the Human Rights Torch Relay (HRTR) made its first stop in Europe.
Set to pass through more than 35 countries and 100 cities, the global torch relay started last week in Athens, running under the banner: "No Olympic Games in China without human rights." It was organised by the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (CIPFG), an international coalition of individuals and organisations concerned about widespread human rights violations in China, according to the organisation's website.
Former Olympian Ms Ines Geipel was a member of the East German (GDR) cross-country team in the 1980s. She was the starting runner of the protest-relay and completed part of the track with 7 year old Fadu Chen, who lost her father due to the persecution of the meditation practice Falun Gong in China six years ago.
"Those who celebrate the Olympic Games in China next year without a change of the human rights situation should know they are doing so with murderers," Ms Geipel said in front of a crowd of about one hundred people that had come to the handover of the torch.
Also carrying the torch were Andreas Krieger and his wife Ute Krieger-Krause, both former athletes and victims of a systematic doping campaign by the communist government of East Germany (GDR). The program saw unsuspecting athletes given large doses of anabolic steroids to boost their results, despite adverse health effects.
Secret East German files recently revealed that as many as 10,000 athletes were involved in a state-sponsored attempt to build a country of 16 million into a sports power rivaling the United States and the Soviet Union.
Mr Krieger, a shot putter who won a gold medal in the 1986 European Athletics Championship, said that although the former Soviet-controlled GDR and today's communist China were different systems, there would be similarities in the methods used to suppress and ideologise people.
"We can't always shift off our responsibility; we have to make a statement today … Only discussions all the time ... Meanwhile people are dying," said Mr Kreiger.
"Never has compliance with the enemies of freedom been any use to freedom," stated Rainer Wagner, chairman of the Union of Victim Associations of Communist Tyranny (UOKG) in a speech at Berlin's Olympic Square. "With deep sadness, we witness that western politics and business is sacrificing its ethical values for short-sighted financial gains and the illusion of fake communication."
The HRTR's next stop will be Munich. It is expected to arrive in Australia at the end of October.
Additional reporting by Ben Hurley, Epoch Times Australia
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