Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-07-09-Speech-3-269"
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"en.20080709.31.3-269"2
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"On the afternoon of Wednesday, 18 June I had an appointment with three respectable, peaceable Chinese citizens at a hotel in Beijing. Barely an hour before we were due to meet I learned that two of them had been picked up by the security service and the third had been officially warned not to talk to me. The two who had been detained were released about 31 hours later. The official line was that they had not been released because they had not been arrested, merely 'interviewed'.
Whatever the case, the Chinese authorities clearly wanted to prevent any personal contact between a member of the European Parliament and these three Chinese nationals. But I fully understand their abominable behaviour. Beijing certainly could not expect three leading representatives of the flourishing protestant house churches to trot out good propaganda about the Olympics. On the eve of this grandiose sporting spectacle, the members of protestant churches that are not officially registered are being subjected to increasingly harsh religious persecution.
China's progressive leaders prefer to keep the harrowing details of this repression firmly under wraps. Naturally. After all, what honour is there in sentencing a simple minister of Beijing house church to do forced labour? For three years he had to spend ten to twelve hours a day making footballs for the upcoming Olympic Games. Enough said about the Chinese form of forced labour!
And what are we to make of Chinese officials who had members of the house churches arrested for rushing to give practical help, voluntarily and out of deeply-held altruistic belief, to the victims of the terrible earthquake in Sichuan Province? That was really beyond the pale. Mr President, long before the start of the Olympic Games in China, I would argue that Beijing has extinguished the Olympic flame by its flagrant disregard for fundamental rights!"@en1
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