Back in April I was a featured speaker at a rally to protest human rights abuses by the Chinese Government, especially highlighting the Bejing Olympics this year as a year to address those violations and abuses.
As the Olympics in Bejing Opens this weekend, there are protests around the world taking place:
Dissident decries attendance at Games
Hours after returning from a foiled attempt to visit his home country on the eve of the Olympics, Chinese dissident Yang Jianli railed against world leaders participating in the event, particularly President Bush.
“Imagine the situation: The heads of democracies swarmed to Beijing to participate in opening ceremonies which took place under martial law,” said Yang, a Harvard scholar and Brookline resident, pointing to the military presence and the crackdown on critics that preceded the event. “Millions of Chinese troops and police are deployed in Beijing and everybody is suspect now. . . . Beijing has become a forbidden city itself.”
Yang never made it to Beijing. He never even made it out of Hong Kong Airport. Yang, who was released last year after five years in a Chinese prison, was sent home via Japan, where he had been traveling.
Anti-China protests worldwide as Olympics begin
Worldwide protests coincide with opening ceremony: Hundreds of Tibetan activists detained in Nepal
Protesters try to turn spotlight from Games to human rights
Deanna Dee-Dee Taylor 