21 April 2008

More on China and the Olympics - Boycotting the Planet

I simply had to shame myself, at the risk of being labelled unoriginal, by featuring yet another lazy link to an external website:
Le Figaro, 21 April - Editorial by Nicolas Barré

It's in French by the way. It contains a paragraph which perfectly summarises part of what I believe vis a vis Tibet related manifestations. I hope my English translation doesn't corrupt Barré's meaning:

"No matter how sincere this pro-tibetan mobilisation is, we can observe that it is sometimes accompanied by an anti-Chinese dimension which is not unlike the anti-Japanese animosity of the 70s and 80s. Under the white flag of great principles and human rights discourses, there often hides, here and there, a certain resentment towards a country, which similarly to Japan 20 to 30 years ago, perturbs the world's equilibrium, notably in economic terms: this mobilisation is often stronger when it is fueled by the fear of the 'made in China'. Cloaked in the noble argument of our so called 'universal values' there often exists the stench of racism which lies at the antipodes of those principles that we pretend to incarnate."

So true!

I believe that the entire world is replete with breaches in human rights.
Lucky Draw: Israel's blatant use of white phosphorus to bomb Lebanon in 2006.

To zero in on a single country's infringement of human rights while ignoring all other cases that spring up in the rest of the world, is either a sign of ignorance, moral panic, hypocrisy, economic motivation or racism.

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