No Democracy Should Participate in the 2022 Beijing Olympics
By Chen Guangcheng, 12/29/21, Wall St. Journal

In advance of the 2022 Olympics this February, the Chi-Comm
Party is on a campaign to whitewash its image. Plastering over
the ever-growing list of human-rights abuses—including the
takeover of Hong Kong, the internment of Muslims in Xinjiang,
the disappearance of tennis star Peng Shuai, the Covid coverup
and threats to democratic Taiwan—the party wields denial,
obfuscation and cash. The latest campaign pushes the absurd
claim that China enjoys democratic govt at home while deriding
as undemocratic the world’s real democracies.

The Communist Party shows no inhibition about spreading falsehoods
in this new misinformation effort. Published last Sept, a govt
white paper broadly publicized in China claimed that the Chinese
people “experience a broad, thorough and true democracy.” In
October, Xi Jinping said China’s National People’s Congress
“guarantees that the people are masters.” In other instances,
Xi has claimed, that “when the people call out, I listen,” and
dismissed American democracy, saying people “go into hibernation”
after elections and otherwise have “no way to exercise their
rights to speak.”

Though laughable, propaganda of this nature is dangerous. The
Chinese people have never had a free election; the occasional
village elections, trotted out for the West to see, are a farce,
and the National People’s Congress is made up entirely of the
party’s handpicked officials. The subject of democracy has been
banned from kindergarten to university classrooms since 2013.
Those who even suggest other systems of govt can expect either
to die in prison (like Nobel Peace laureate Liu Xiaobo ) or to
be killed outright (as Tiananmen Sq. democracy activists were
in 1989).

The Chinese people live under a lockdown of info. But even
Americans are caught in an info vacuum. Foreign journalists
in China face intense pressure to speak carefully about the
country, & U.S. media outlets often take the regime at its word.

There are countless examples of the cold brutality of this
regime. Human-rights attorney Wang Quanzhang disappeared in
2015 in a nationwide crackdown on lawyers and activists. Wang’s
wife, Li Wenzu, went thru all available legal channels to locate
her husband, only to face harassment and house arrest. She shaved
her head in public (in Chinese the words for “hair” and “law”
are both pronounced “fa”), but only in 2019, after more than
4 years, did she learn that Wang had been transferred to a prison
in Shandong (the one in which I was held). Desperate to make
contact, Li gathered friends to call out Wang’s name from outside
the prison, hoping he might hear their voices. She was evicted
from her home as a result.

Activist Guo Feixiong has been imprisoned and tortured multiple
times since 2005 for his work fighting corruption and promoting democracy. His wife was able to leave China with their children,
but she has since been diagnosed with late-stage cancer. Guo’s
passport was confiscated at the airport a few months ago when
he was on his way to see her. After Guo wrote an open letter to
Premier Li Keqiang asking for help, he got word that he'd be
arrested. He tried to hide, but the state’s high-tech
surveillance system located him, and he disappeared on Dec. 5.

Zhang Zhan, a young lawyer, left her job to travel to Wuhan to
report on the outbreak of Covid and life under lockdown. The
Communist Party’s response was to lock her up, torture her and
force her to endure a mock trial. Zhang has been on a hunger
strike since May 4. Her family has sought every pathway to free
her, in vain. In all likelihood, she is near death.

This is what it means when “the people call out” in China. After
my own 7-year persecution for exposing abuses in the one-child
policy, these cases fill me with sorrow and anger, intensified
by the campaigns to paint over the Chi-Comm Party’s horrific
misdeeds. That the West would be unsure of the truth about life
in China or unclear about the party’s intentions—or worse,
willing to accept cash to ignore democratic values—is more
frustrating than words can describe.

Democracy may sometimes appear ungainly, messy or mundane.
It isn't always public or on display. But make no mistake:
An authoritarian dictatorship is a nightmare from which one
doesn't awaken. The Olympics have been scheduled under the
orchestration of a genocidal regime. Can any self-respecting
democratic nation agree to attend?

Mr. Chen is a distinguished fellow at the Center for Human Rights
at the Catholic University of America and author of “The Barefoot
Lawyer: A Blind Man’s Fight for Justice and Freedom in China.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/no-democracy-should-participate-in-the-2022-winter-beijing-olympics-internment-torture-ccp-xinjiang-surveillance-human-rights-11640789709