Bishop runs straight into Olympic Games row

Apr 9 2008 By Robert Mitchell, Wishaw Press

THE leader of Lanarkshire’s Catholics has waded into the political row over China’s Olympic Games after he compared the country to Nazi Germany.

Bishop of Motherwell Joseph Devine gave his support for peaceful protests against China’s communist leaders, but his comments likening them to Hitler’s authoritarian regime are sure to raise eyebrows.

As he condemned the Beijing Games, the bishop branded China’s rulers “inhuman” and said they had committed “evil atrocities” against millions of their own people as well as in Tibet.

Bishop Devine continued: “Not since the 1936 Berlin Games in Nazi Germany has the Olympic Games been held in a country where arbitrary executions, imprisonment without trial, secret surveillance by security forces, torture and persecution have been so brutally perpetrated by the regime in power.

“China’s communist rulers hope to exploit the Olympics as a tool for their own political ends; to advance their own propaganda and propagate lies to disguise their inhuman regime. Let us use that same tool to expose them for what they are, ruthless dictators who have committed the most evil atrocities not only against their own people but who have been implicitly involved with murderous regimes in Darfur and Burma.”

The bishop added that China needs to pay more attention to world opinion and he encouraged reformers from within the country to come forward “not unlike developments that took place in the Kremlin 20 years ago.” He hit out at the leaders of the free world and governments who “have chosen to turn a blind eye to China’s crimes against humanity in their rush to secure a slice of China’s trade and investment.”

Bishop Devine’s comments come against a backdrop of protest about China’s staging of the Olympic Games. Attempts to disrupt the relay of the Olympic Torch are gathering pace and even the president of the International Olympic Committee, Jacques Rogge, has expressed concern over recent unrest in Tibet. At the weekend 37 arrests were made after clashes between pro-Tibet protesters and police as the Olympic torch made its way through London and early this week protests spread to Paris.

The bishop added: “As the Olympic torch journeys across the world let us conduct as many peaceful and lawful demonstrations as can be organised to reveal the truth about China, the biggest police state in the world.

“Then there is Tibet. That tortured, ancient, peace-loving spiritual land. Where, as in China itself, Chinese communist rule directs state-sponsored killings, forced abortions and sterilisation of women more often than not without the fuss of anaesthetics or medical treatment, forcible resettlements of thousands upon thousands of men, women and children to the harshest of living conditions in special camps without education or medical facilities, violent oppression of freedom of speech and religious practice, forced labour in appalling working conditions where torture is the price for failure to achieve quotas. China has locked down Tibet and turned it into a prison.”