Chinese Censorship of YouTube: Boycott the Olympics in China

China is blinding its own citizens the world from its affairs in Tibet. After a protest broke out in Lhasa, the Tibetian capital, it has shut off access to foreign media and blocked sites like YouTube.com where dozens of videos of the protests showed up. Videos and photos on YouTube show footage of local Tibetians and monks protesting peacefully, some show them marching on the streets, some show students carrying flags and shouting for a 'Free Tibet', some show men dead from Chinese attacks. China is also blocking access to CNN and BBC and Google News.

Officially, Tibet is an autonomous part of China. But for decades the Tibetians have been struggling against the Chinese regime that they claim is gradually annihilating them. Tibet has long been voicing to the world the second-class treatment meted out to its citizens by the Chinese authorities. The Chinese government also has a long history of gross human rights violation. In 1989 there was a widespread movement to liberate Tibet and China brutally suppressed it.

The recent string of protests and demonstrations began in the eastern Tibetian province of Amdo late last month and has escalated into a large scale problem in Lhasa and has caught the international attention with the Chinese government curbing the media. Dalai Lama, the Tibetian movement's leader called the Chinese policy to wards Tibet one of cultural genocide and urged the protesters to continue on a peaceful protest. China has used violence, tear gas and mass arrests to control the protest. While Tibet claims that nearly 100 people have died and many have been arrested by China, the Chinese government denies this report.

In a high-handed approach, China is censoring news pertaining to the protests - this censorship has crossed all limits of tolerance. While keeping the international media in the dark is an injustice to Tibet, distorting the news and what their own citizens hear is a grave injustice to their own country. Wonder what is next in China's tactics? Maybe China will ask Google to strip out all news items and all YouTube video pertaining to Tibet from the web!

Russia is overtly supportive of China while the response of the West is muted in its criticism of China. It is of concern that no one is stepping forward to check the atrocities of the rising superpower.

Surprisingly the unrest and imposition of martial law in Tibet and attempts to suppress information flow comes just prior to the upcoming Olympic Games to be hosted by China in August 2008. In bidding for the Olympic Games, China had assured the Olympics committee of better human rights policies and media freedom. But we can see it is a big lie and a farce. While the Olympics charter advocates a peaceful society and moral qualities of chivalry and world truce, China adopts a diametrically opposite policy of censorship and human rights violation. This speaks volumes about China's spirit behind hosting the games - the spirit of commercializing and aggrandizing wealth.

In 1980, denouncing the the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan, many countries including the USA boycotted the games in Moscow. Let us get together and boycott Olympics in China now.