Very soon, an international committee, meeting in Moscow, will decide which country will have the prestige of hosting the summer Olympic Games in 2008. Right now, in Congress, there is a resolution introduced by Tom Lantos and Christopher Cox opposing the selection of that nation of prison camps for peaceful dissenters.

Their resolution reminds their colleagues and the rest of us that when Adolf Hitler presided over the Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936, the New York Times reported: "Olympics leave glow of pride in the Reich . . . A piece of perfect German pageantry . . . Visitors gain a good impression."

As part of this Olympics bid to distract attention from the Chinese government's remorseless persecution of people of religious faith and other prisoners of conscience in its gulags, the China National Tourist Administration paid for a splendidly illustrated 12-page insert in the June 10 New York Times Sunday magazine. The ad was titled "Discover China in the New Century . . . an ever-evolving new China." [...] The Embassy of China has sent a letter to members of Congress attacking the Lantos-Cox resolution on the 2008 Olympics. [...]

Amnesty International reports that "torture and ill-treatment of prisoners of conscience of all kinds continues to be widespread" in China. [...]

As of this writing, the House International Relations Committee has solidly approved the Lantos-Cox resolution by a 26-8 vote. But the House Republican leadership has taken no action on it so far, and it has not scheduled a debate on the floor. [...] We shamed ourselves in 1936. Do we want to leave "a glow of pride" among the commanders of the prison labor camps in China in 2008?

http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20010702-29679756.htm