For more than 100 years, foreign nations have come together for athletic competition in the Olympic Games. The terms hard work, patriotism, honor and teamwork are usually synonymous with the Olympic Games. However, the upcoming 2008 Beijing Olympics should be associated with human rights violation and genocide. China has refused to improve its human rights record and currently supports abuses by the governments of Sudan, Burma and North Korea. In response to China's violations of human rights and its support of the genocide in Darfur, the U.S. should boycott the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Firstly, the Chinese government employs capital punishment for over 60 crimes, including minor felonies like embezzlement and tax fraud, according to Amnesty International. The U.S. also uses capital punishment, but not nearly to the extent of the Chinese government.

In 1950, the Chinese army invaded Tibet and forced an agreement affirming China's sovereignty over Tibet. The Dalai Lama, a Tibetan religious leader, has referred to the Chinese government's treatment of the Tibetan population as an "apartheid" due to the denial of social and economic rights to Tibetans. The Chinese government consistently imprisons Tibetan monks for crimes like expressing opinions about a lecture of Tibetan history and distributing pamphlets about Tibetan independence. However, the Chinese government is not only treating Tibetans poorly, it treats its own citizens badly.

To prepare for the 2008 Olympic Games, the Chinese government has begun to force residents to relocate to make room for Olympic venues. According to the International Human Rights Watch, the government has already evicted more than 300,000 residents to accommodate beautification projects alone. Additionally, Beijing authorities shut down 50 unregistered schools for migrant workers' children and plan to expel over one million migrant workers from the city in order to make room for Olympic stadiums and venues, according to Amnesty International.

The U.S. values freedom of political opinion and freedom of speech. In China, however, expression of political views and protests are punishable by imprisonment and torture. The Internet, newspapers, magazines, books, television, radio broadcasts and films are all heavily censored by the Chinese government. Journalists and writers, who see news out of China or debate politically sensitive ideas among themselves, can face punishments ranging from unemployment to long term imprisonment. References to democracy, the Free Tibet movement and anything else questioning the legitimacy of the Communist Party of China is banned from publication and blocked on the Internet. Human rights activists endure the same harsh punishments for expressing their liberal opinions.

Additionally, China has shown support for the atrocious genocide currently taking place in Darfur. China is the number one economic and military ally of the Sudanese government and buys approximately 71 percent of all Sudanese exports in addition to supplying the Sudanese government with arms, according to Amnesty International. Also, the Chinese government has financially and diplomatically supported Omar al-Bashir, who is responsible for the government's proxy militias in Darfur, and thus the Darfur genocide.

Because of these vast infringements of human rights, the U.S. should boycott the 2008 Beijing Olympics, just as it did during the 1980 Moscow Olympics. The U.S. led other nations in a boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics in protest of the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. After the Soviet Union refused to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan, the U.S. finalized its boycott in objection. The U.S.'s participation in the 2008 Olympics would be the equivalent to when the U.S. took part in the 1936 Olympic Games in Nazi Germany. In 1936, the U.S. came to Germany a year after the Nuremberg Laws, authorizing the discrimination against Jews, went into effect. The U.S. was mostly unaware of the genocide in the near future. However, currently, the U.S. is fully aware of the genocide occurring in Darfur and should therefore take appropriate action.

It would be shameful for the U.S. to participate in the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games because of the utter encroachment on the principles of democracy and human rights in the People's Republic of China.