According to a report by Amnesty International things have actually gotten worse in China with the approach of the Olympics.

According to the report the government has been working overtime to make sure that not a whiff of dissent will arise from the ‘people’ of the glorious ‘Peoples Republic’. Anyone with a sign of criticism has been imprisoned or shipped off to the hinterlands.

The group names individual activists including Hu Jia, Yang Chunlin and Ye Guozhu as among those who have effectively been silenced by the government in recent weeks.

A dissenting view has come from a group called The China Society for Human Rights Studies, but this is an organization that is basically run by the Chinese government so I personally don’t give it much credit.

Human rights activists have urged world leaders to use the platform of the Olympics to address these issues. I am of mixed views on this idea, on the one hand I do not want to politicize the situation when the athletes have worked so hard to get there. On the other hand I am (as my 2 or 3 regular readers know) a very harsh critic of the Chinese regime.

One can only hope that the news media will at least take this situation to remind the people of the world that a billion souls are trapped behind the harsh regime in Beijing.