Human Rights Torch Relay

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Chen Kai (right) with an Olympic Goddess (left)

The Human Rights Torch Relay (HRTR), organized by the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong started in Athens on 09 August 2007^[1], one year before the start of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. It is planned to pass through 150 cities^[2].

The role of the Human Rights Torch relay is to awareness of the Chinese communist regime's human rights abuses. It strongly condemns the Chinese regime’s crackdown in Tibet; the regime's role in the genocide from Darfur; the ongoing persecution of Falun Gong; its support of corrupt regimes in Burma, N. Korea and Zimbabwe; and persecution of Christians, lawyers, reporters and "all who have become ‘prisoners of the Olympics’ as a consequence of China’s pre-Olympic whitewash"^[3].

Human Rights Abuse Cannot Co-exist with Beijing Olympics

The main slogan of the torch relay is: "The Olympics and crimes against humanity cannot co-exist in China."^[4] although it does not intend to boycott the Olympic games^[5]

Chen Kai, a former member of China’s national basketball team said that compared the Beijing Olympics with the games in Germany in 1936, and in the Soviet Union in 1980, and said that "this year’s (Olympic games) will go down in history as a gross corruption of the Olympic spirit" ^[6]

Jan Becker (left), an Australian swimmer in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and Martins Rubenis (right), a Bronze Prize-Winner of Winter Olympic Games 2006; in Athens when the Human Rights Torch Relay started in 9 August, 2007