The world is coming to see the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing for what this extravaganza has become: a Faustian bargain.
Last Tuesday, the International Olympic Committee admitted that its deal with China allows the communist country to censor the estimated 20,000 journalists who will cover the games, which begin Friday. This, after the IOC repeatedly had stated that the media would be free to inform the public.
And this, after China had issued similar empty assurances.
By Thursday, the Chinese government stated it "won't allow the spread of any information that is forbidden by law or harms national interests."
We suppose that would include any reports on the roughly 130 people from the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989 still being held in Chinese prisons. Or the country's brutish occupation of Tibet, its suppression of free speech and religious worship, and the nation's untold other human-rights violations documented by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and others speaking on behalf of those silenced by China.
The Olympics, which celebrate physical endurance and the indomitable human spirit, are being hosted by a country that crushes those who cry out for freedom. That is China's human-rights legacy, which is not so easily whitewashed -- even by the pageantry of the Olympics.
History should have taught the IOC never to pass its torch to countries that are determined to extinguish the human spirit.
