Human Rights go Downhill at the Olympics

...the two...children say that their heads were shaved and that class monitors and teachers frequently hit them, locked them in dark rooms and forced them to hold stress positions as punishment for perceived transgressions. 

By the time they were able to return home...they had become malnourished and traumatized. They had also forgotten how to speak their mother tongues...

As you read this disturbing testimony from two children did you assume it was from Indigenous adults in Canada who were the victims of the Residential School system? Sadly, it could have been, but this is the recent account of ethnicallly Uyghur kids who were held in China. The NPR article from which this was taken explains: 

Since 2017, authorities in Xinjiang have rounded up hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs, a largely Muslim ethnic minority group, and sent them to detention centers where they are taught Mandarin Chinese and Chinese political ideology. Camp detainees have reported being forced to work in factories during their detention or after they are released. The children of those detained or arrested are often sent to state boarding schools, even when relatives are willing to take them in.

As the Winter Olympic games commence in China I am baffled, once again, by the moral failure of nations, including Canada, in supporting this regime. I have written many times about the suppression of religious freedom, including for Christians. Many have been incarcerated and some have died for their beliefs. Why have they been awarded the prestigious games and a world stage when there have been so many human rights abuses? 

What is like for the two Michaels, Spavor and Kovrig, who were imprisoned in miserable conditions for many months, to witness the "sport as usual" approach the Canadian government has taken? Do we have no ethical gumption at all in the face of a tyrannical bully? Athletes and journalists in Beijing for the Olympics have been warned not to breathe a word about human rights while they are there. 

Canadian athletes marched into the Bird's Nest Stadium this morning and I do hope they excel in this challenging pandemic setting, but the democratic world could have done so much better. I appreciate the cartoons of Michael de Adder who once again is a prophetic voice in the face of injustice.