Richard Gere at a meeting with Germany's Parliament members in 2006, attended also by Romanian climber and cameraman Sergiu Matei, who posted the film footage on the Nangpa La shootings. Image courtesy of ICT(click to enlarge).
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More voices raised for boycott of Beijing Olympics
Posted: Mar 15, 2008 12:20 am EDT
(MountEverest.net) As usual, the community loved the interview with Inaki Ochoa. "I have been reading Iñaki Ochoa article about China closing Everest and...I will join Iñaki in the Peking Olympics games boycott, no TV, no press, not even Internet news...and I will promote the boycott with my climbing friends, I love your page," wrote a climber from Mexico.
Most everyone have been resisting a boycott, except for folks like Inaki.
"I'll personally boycott the Beijing Olympics this summer," he told ExplorersWeb. “China executed 1.010 people last year, according to their own figures, or between 7.500 and 8.000, according to Amnesty International. Even in the best of cases, this represents 65% of executions done in the world per year," Inaki said.
"The family of the executed pays for the bullet, while the state sells the organs. The Tibetan genocide is still unpunished, after 1 million Tibetans were exterminated between 1950 and 1970, and another million are living in exile. And the IOC awards China with the Games?"
Hollywood actor and chairman of the International Campaign for Tibet Richard Gere told Reuters today that neither Dalai Lama nor the ICT advocates a boycott of the Summer Olympics. But now he too is changing his mind.
Gere told the news source it was his personal opinion that it would be "unconscionable" to attend the Beijing Games if China failed to deal peacefully with unrest in the Himalayan region -- protests that have turned to riots and already claimed several lives.
"I've not been pro-boycott, but I think if this is not handled correctly, yes we should boycott. Everyone should boycott," Gere told Reuters. He also joins in on the general confusion about why China has been handling the situation the way they have, "It's just so foolish and short-sighted. Everything that they want is destroyed in moments like this," he said.
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