On Saturday, May 17, the Global Human Rights Torch Relay took place in Toronto, as part of a 40 country, 150-city tour to expose the human rights atrocities of the Chinese regime before the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.
With its motto 'The Olympics and Crimes Against Humanity Cannot Co-exist in China', the Torch relay rally attracted representatives from the Tibetan, Vietnamese, Sudanese, Burmese, Uighur communities, as well other human rights activists, including Canadian Olympic icon Elvis Stojko.
Award winning Canadian writer and journalist Sheng Xue delivered a speech (see below) at the event, in which she expressed the hope that the human rights torch is bringing to persecuted individuals and groups in China.
Please pass me the torch
The slogan of the Beijing Olympic Games is: One world, one dream.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could all share this dream?
But so many people in this world cannot enjoy the dream.
For them it is an endless nightmare!
The Human Rights Torch is a beam of light calling on people to wake from their nightmare.
Today,
I'm one of thousands small bodies of students in Sichuan,
My dream forever dead under a TUFU building collapsed by the earthquake.
I'm one of millions child labors from Liangshan working 16 to 18 hours every day—a virtual slave.
I'm one of millions girls sold like a piece of cloth and forced into prostitution.
My cries are overwhelmed by the laughs of the rich and the powerful.
I'm one of millions child workers at illegal brick kilns in Shanxi province
Who never sees the light of the stars.
Please pass me the torch
Today,
I'm one of millions poverty-stricken peasants, infected with aids.
I earn my living by selling my blood.
I'm one of millions innocent victims of SARS or bird flu.
Is my life worth nothing, soon to be forgotten?
I'm one of millions workers digging endlessly in deep, dark coalmines.
Where my dream, my life, is buried by an explosion.
I'm a one of millions petitioners bullied and ignored by corrupt officials.
My long cry for justice disappears in a dark wilderness.
Please pass me the torch
Today,
I'm one of millions homeless, my home stolen to make way for Olympic facilities.
I'm one of millions migrant workers eating sand, born by the wind, on the streets of a sparkling city.
I'm one of thousands victims from Tiananmen Square massacre.
I'm a no-name person from Tiananmen still detained after 19 years.
I'm on a blacklist, facing a warrant for arrest.
I'm one of thousands exiled dissidents not allowed to return with dignity to China.
Or: I'm a dead dissident, ending my life overseas,
unable to fulfill my dream of returning home.
Please pass me the torch
Today,
I'm a prisoner of conscience—one of thousands.
I'm Hu Jia, Yang Zili,
Wang Bingzhang, Huang Jinqiu,
Yang Tianshui, Zhan Lin,
Gao Zhisheng, Cheng Guangcheng
and Guo Feixiong.
Today,
I'm a Falun Gong Practitioner. I'm a Tibetan. I'm a Uyghur.
I'm a dying villager in Burma, ... in North Korea, ... in Darfur—
disdained by the government of China that values dollars over decency!
I am an endless list of desperate souls Praying:
wake me wake me wake me up from the nightmare.
Please pass me the torch
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