China Sends Two Old Women to "Re-education Camp"

I saw this article this morning on the "editorial/opinion" page of the local Journal/Sentinel newspaper and tracked it down online. I think this says all that has to be said about the regime in China - sending two old women to jail for a year. The rotten dirty filthy slimeballs. Will people remember this - or the fake fireworks and the fake singer and the drugged-up Chinese athletes hijacked from their parents at age 2 to go to "training school" and forced to perform on the world stage at ages 10 and 12 for the greater glory of China? Or will they remember the greater glory of the Borg showing their "superiority" over the rest of the world??? This photo was not part of the online article. There was a photo in the hard-print newspaper showing the two ladies, but I could not locate it online. I found this photo of the two grandmothers here. Web Posted: 08/24/2008 12:00 CDT Human spirit wins in Beijing Jonathan Gurwitz The Beijing Olympics have provided spectators with many inspiring individual achievements: Michael Phelps' eight gold medals, Nastia Liukin's graceful pantomime and Usain Bolt's superhuman speed among them. The most powerful performance in Beijing this fortnight was not, however, delivered by athletes. Not by the young and spry. Not by the swift or strong. Wu Dianyuan is 79. Wang Xiuying is 77. Both, reports the New York Times, walk with the help of a cane. Wang is blind in one eye. Neither had ever expressed any public discontent with the Chinese government. But they dared to apply to hold a legal protest in one of three zones designated for limited demonstrations during the Olympic Games. China's authoritarian leaders created the zones under pressure from the International Olympic Committee. Though strictly controlled, they were a nod to Olympic ideals about human dignity. On Monday, Beijing police announced they had received a total of 77 applications for protest. None was approved. The New China News Agency quoted a government spokesman as saying that 74 applications were withdrawn because the issues being raised were “properly addressed by relevant authorities.” Two applications were rejected because they were incomplete, one because the proposed protest violated rules. In China, the worlds of Orwell and Kafka seem to intersect. This is a small measure of the kinds of insults to human dignity that 1.3 billion Chinese people suffer on a daily basis. The spectacle of the Olympic Games can't disguise those indignities. The glare from digitally enhanced fireworks can't obscure them. The Chinese people deserve our admiration for economically, educationally and technologically raising their nation into the 20th century, in spite of oppressive and corrupt leaders. The oppressive and corrupt Chinese government deserves our disdain. Little Yang Peiyi is admirable. If you watched the opening ceremonies, it was her seven-year-old voice you heard singing the patriotic anthem, “Ode to the Motherland.” The Chinese authorities who deemed her to be insufficiently beautiful to serve the state are loathsome. They forced the little girl to sing backstage while a nine-year-old model of socialist perfection lip-synched before the audience of 90,000 at the Bird's Nest and millions more television viewers around the world. Yet another insult to human dignity. Presumably, the application to protest filed by Wu and Wang was among those that were “properly addressed.” They wanted to demonstrate against the limited compensation they received when the government seized their homes for redevelopment. Another insult to human dignity. For their effort, Beijing police sentenced the frail women to one year of “re-education” at a labor camp. Is it any wonder, then, that the authoritarian rulers who fear the strength of their small protest also fear the strength of “unofficial” churches, temples and mosques? Is a government that sentences old women to labor camps really deserving of the world's admiration? No crowd cheered Wu and Wang as they wrote out their application for protest. No high definition camera captured the moment when they filed it with authorities. No one saw their triumph. But Wu and Wang captured the gold in Beijing for the human spirit.

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I have one word for the current Chinese regime: PUKE! Sad to say, I wonder how many Americans, upon reading this, will even understand the allusions to Kafka and Orwell?