ONE WORLD ONE DREAM FOR DARFUR

ONE WORLD ONE DREAM - The Beijing Olympic Theme
is a contradiction with Chinese Human Rights Lack of Policy

Why shouldn't the genocide in Darfur be halted during the Olympics
in "the spirit" of the Olympics and Beijing's selected theme?

Above two photo credits: Sandra Hammel

Ask Senators McCain and Obama to co-sponsor Senate Res. 632 and support the Olympic Truce for Darfur
www.dreamfordarfur.org

Contact Senator Obama

Washington D.C. Office
713 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510
(202) 224-2854
(202) 228-4260 fax

Contact Senator McCain

Washington Office:

241 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Main: 202-224-2235
Fax: 202-228-2862

Take Action: Write or Call Senator Obama and Senator McCain

Senate Resolution 632 urges the governments of the People’s Republic of China and the international community to use the upcoming Olympic Games as an opportunity to push for the parties to the conflicts in Sudan, Chad, and the Central African Republic to cease hostilities and revive efforts toward a peaceful resolution of their national and regional conflicts. The resolution also encourages the United Nations Secretary-General and other international leaders to publicly promote the principles reflected in the Olympic Truce among all the warring parties in the region.

A cessation of hostilities during an Olympic Truce period – such as that called for in Senate Resolution 632 – could allow much-needed humanitarian aid to reach those people who have been out of reach of food, clean water, and medical care for years.

Both Senators McCain and Obama have raised their voices in support of the people of Darfur and have called on China to take action. The Beijing games represent a unique opportunity: an Olympic Truce could help restore peace and stability to Darfur. Urge the Senators to take action by announcing their co-sponsorship of Senate Resolution 632 and speaking publicly in support of the Olympic Truce for Darfur.

2006 Olympian Joey Cheek was planning to go to Beijing to speak up on human rights issues until the Chinese revoked his visa Wednesday. (Globe Staff Photo / Stan Grossfeld)

The other Cheek

Gold-medal speedskater is making new strides ans advocate for Darfur

By Stan Grossfeld Globe Staff / August 6, 2008

Source: www.boston.com

PROVIDENCE - Speedskater Joey Cheek, 29, glides through T.F. Green International Airport as if he's in a race with himself, his long, thin torso leaning slightly forward when he walks. His Olympic gold medal is stashed in his backpack. He's in New England to give a motivational speech for a pharmaceutical company to help pay those pesky Princeton tuition bills. But he has his eyes on a bigger prize. Peace in Darfur, Sudan.

At the 2006 Turin Olympics, Cheek won the gold medal in the 500-meter speedskating event. When he met the media, he was different from the other athletes. Instead of gushing about his performance ("I skate around in skates and tights, it's not that big a deal"), Cheek used his 15 minutes of fame to talk about death in the desert. Specifically, the genocide in Darfur, where an estimated 400,000 people have died. He donated his award money ($25,000 for his gold medal, $15,000 for his silver) to Darfur refugees through "Right To Play," a humanitarian group working in Africa. And he challenged others to join him.

"From the $40,000 I donated, we raised over a million," he said. "That's over 20 times the effectiveness."

Talk about a win-win, Cheek then co-founded Team Darfur, an international coalition of athletes committed to bring peace to Darfur.

Though some urged Cheek to just shut up and skate, he will do neither. He retired after the 2006 Games and was planning to attend the Beijing Olympics as a human rights activist - until his visa was revoked by Chinese authorities Wednesday.

Cheek was hoping to support the 390 athletes who have joined Team Darfur, 73 of whom will be competing.

"That was a big shock," Cheek told the Associated Press. "I wasn't expecting to get a call the evening before I was leaving for Beijing."

China is the largest economic supporter of Sudan and also provides weapons to the Sudanese government. Both countries' human rights abuses are well documented.

In July, Cheek and Team Darfur released an open letter signed by 150 elite athletes calling for an Olympic Truce - historically dating back to ancient Greece - to demand that the Sudanese government cease all attacks on civilians in Darfur for at least the 55-day period surrounding the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the Paralympic Games.

"Despite the complexities of the fighting that's going on between the rebels and the government, there are 2 1/2 million men, women, and children who have been driven from their homes by a government that doesn't want them there. The UN needs to get peacekeepers into the area. There should be 26,000 troops in there."

Last fall, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution introduced by China and signed by Sudan calling for an Olympic Truce during the Games.

Cheek wants that agreement honored.

"We're saying, 'You've called for this truce. The world community has signed off on this. Maybe we can forestall the starvation of 10,000 or 20,000 people and work towards a more permanent truce.' "

He wants to hear voices
Cheek wants athletes to speak their minds freely.

"Athletes should have the right to say, 'There are things in this world that are not right and we need to address them,' " he said. "One of them is Darfur, and China is the host country and it's keeping those people from fulfilling their dreams. There's potential Olympians there."

Cheek was upset because one Team Darfur member, Kendra Zanotta, a former bronze medal-winning synchronized swimmer who is now a journalist, recently was denied a visa, he says, because of her affiliation with Team Darfur.

"I'm not stunned that a non-democratic government that doesn't endorse individual rights would be heavy-handed," he said. "Now we look at China, it seems like they're clamping down more and more and more in every single regard."

He is also upset about the lack of support Zanotta received from the international community.

"Who is objecting?" he said. "Everyone's so desperate to do business in China that nobody's calling them on it. Now everybody's kowtowing, saying, 'We don't want to do anything to insult anybody.' "

Cheek says China's support of the regime of Sudan President Omar al-Bashir - whose arrest is sought by the International Criminal Court - is despicable. Sudan sells 80 percent of its oil exports to China.

"China has great economic ties with Sudan so they back the Sudanese," he said. "They don't really care what happens, it seems like, to the people in Darfur. And so in the broad cloth of ethnic cleansing, whatever can happen happens and China goes 'Hey, it's just business.' "

Cheek, a sophomore at Princeton studying economics and Chinese language, chooses his words carefully. He lives in Washington, D.C., and still admires the Great Communicator, Ronald Reagan.

He also was a member of the 2006 Clinton Global Initiative.

Cheek can't remember the last time he laced up his skates. He's not interested in hockey (sorry, Bruins) or, for that matter, any team sports. Don't be surprised if he spends his life in politics.

But peace in Darfur means more to him than all of his Olympic accomplishments.

"Peace in Darfur would be a much more huge accomplishment, infinitely more satisfying," he said.

Getting the skating bug
In the past two years, Cheek has visited Zambia, Ethiopia, and refugee camps in Chad where Darfurians languish. He also has visited China and Egypt with Academy Award-winning actor George Clooney and testified before Congress and United Nations officials. He has shared a stage with Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel.

The path he has taken to becoming a human rights advocate is unusual.

When he was 9 years old in Greensboro, N.C., he told his mother that for $2 he could join a roller skating team.

"As soon as I put my skates on, I thought, 'This is what I want to do,' " he said.

By the time he was 14, he was an inline skating junior national champion.

"When I was 15, I watched the 1994 Lillehammer Olympics and saw Norway's speedskater, Johann Koss, win three gold medals," he said.

It was Koss who counseled Cheek to support Right To Play, an agency Koss helped start, and to designate the funds for Darfur victims.

But as a wide-eyed teen watching the Lillehammer Games on television, Cheek simply turned to his mother and said, "Mom, I want to do that next."

She looked him in the eye and said, "That isn't going to happen here."

And she let him skate away to pursue his dream.

He lived with a host family in Calgary, then Milwaukee, then Montana, and finally Park City, Utah, where he trained for the 2002 Games in Salt Lake City. He became so obsessed with improving his times he couldn't sleep.

"You'd have the worst insomnia because you'd be worrying about, 'Am I going to be able to skate the same times I skated yesterday?' " he said.

"It was just miserable. I couldn't eat. Calling home every day and talking to the sports psychologist and generally freaking out. I kind of limped through the year. My own self-worth was wrapped up in my performance. If I had a great day, I was on top of the world. If I had a bad day, I thought, 'I'm not going to make the team.' "

But he surprised a lot of people when he won a bronze medal in 2002.

"I skated the best 1,000 meters I've ever skated and got the bronze," he said. "It is, of course, fantastic, and a big relief, but the biggest realization I had was basically that I had just pushed myself to manic depression and had been miserable and then when I did it, I looked around and thought, 'This is it?' The sun rises the same way and I still had to train seven hours a day."

A matter of awareness
At Salt Lake City, Cheek was surprised at the media attention he received, all the "what's a kid from North Carolina doing ice skating?" questions.

"I realized you have a real shot to do something and not just win a medal and feel good about yourself," he said. "I decided next time not to do just a puppies-and-ice-cream interview."

He started Team Darfur because he wanted to bring attention to an area he believes was largely ignored by the American public.

"So much of the news in the US is absolute garbage," he said. "It's easy to say, 'I'm not going to watch anything serious, I'll watch this garbage on Britney Spears.'

"I don't blame the media as much as I blame ourselves. If that's all you know, it erodes a lot of what makes this country as great as it is.

"Do I think it's wrong? That Britney Spears got 10 million more minutes of air time than 300,000 people in Africa getting slaughtered? Yeah, I think it's bad, but I try to focus on what I can do."

What he saw in Chad changed his life.

"Seeing those people in the camps is soul-crushing," he said. "You feel helpless.

"As an American citizen, if things get rough, I can always pack up and go somewhere else. People in refugee camps in Chad can't. There's 40,000 people living under a plastic sheet. There's no farming, no crops, they eat whatever trucks bring in. They are 100 percent dependent on someone taking care of them. They're stuck, and if someone rides in and starts gunning them down, there's nowhere else to go.

"What infuriates me, though, is when you see people willfully supporting the dictator that enables this or giving the arms to one group of poor people so they can slaughter another slightly poorer group of poor people, that infuriates me."

It also angers him that some nations are muzzling their athletes from making political statements.

"Olympic committees in the United Kingdom, Belgium, or New Zealand, countries that enjoy the same freedoms that we do, tell you, 'It's not our place to be talking about this, that's someone else's issue,' and no one else is solving it. That infuriates me."

Joshua Rubenstein, Northeast Regional Director for Amnesty International USA, said Cheek is making a difference.

"It is great that Mr. Cheek's voice is raising awareness, especially at this time," said Rubenstein. "The situation in Darfur has cried out for international attention for years. The suffering continues and still requires human intervention and protection for millions of civilians who are displaced.

"It is our hope that more athletes use the platform to shine the spotlight on human rights. China needs to be pressed on their involvement in Sudan."

"A lot of people are attacking me personally," said Cheek, "but not a lot of people are attacking the idea that these 2 million people need protection. They may want me to go away, but you can't assail the fact that these people need our help." The other Cheek

One World One Dream text from the Beijing Olympic website:

"One World One Dream" fully reflects the essence and the universal values of the Olympic spirit -- Unity, Friendship, Progress, Harmony, Participation and Dream. It expresses the common wishes of people all over the world, inspired by the Olympic ideals, to strive for a bright future of Mankind. In spite of the differences in colors, languages and races, we share the charm and joy of the Olympic Games, and together we seek for the ideal of Mankind for peace. We belong to the same world and we share the same aspirations and dreams.

"One World One Dream" is a profound manifestation of the core concepts of the Beijing Olympic Games. It reflects the values of harmony connoted in the concept of "People's Olympics", the core and soul of the three concepts -- "Green Olympics, High-tech Olympics and People's Olympics". While "Harmony of Man with Nature" and "Peace Enjoys Priority" are the philosophies and ideals of the Chinese people since ancient times in their pursuit of the harmony between Man and Nature and the harmony among people, building up a harmonious society and achieving harmonious development are the dream and aspirations of ours. It is our belief that peace and progress, harmonious development, living in amity, cooperation and mutual benefit, and enjoying a happy life are the common ideals of the people throughout the world.

"One World, One Dream" is simple in expressions, but profound in meaning. It is of China, and also of the world. It conveys the lofty ideal of the people in Beijing as well as in China to share the global community and civilization and to create a bright future hand in hand with the people from the rest of the world. It expresses the firm belief of a great nation, with a long history of 5,000 years and on its way towards modernization, that is committed to peaceful development, harmonious society and people's happiness. It voices the aspirations of 1.3 billion Chinese people to contribute to the establishment of a peaceful and bright world.

The English translation of the slogan is distinctive in sentence structure. The two "One's are perfectly used in parallel, and the words "World" and "Dream" form a good match. The slogan is simple, meaningful, inspiring, and easy to remember, read and spread.

In Chinese, the word "tongyi", which means "the same", is used for the English word "One". It highlights the theme of "the whole Mankind lives in the same world and seeks for the same dream and ideal".

Link to President Hu of China