Viewers should boycott Olympics in China

Recently a Metuchen High School student asked me to support him in a Darfur awareness program. I agreed but first wanted to know what he hew about Darfur. He told me it was a place in Africa where lots of people have been attacked, creating many refugees and resulting in many people killed.

I responded that Darfur is in the southern part of the African country of Sudan, in which the Arab Islamic people of the north recently finished a war against black Christians in the south. Now these same Arab Islamic militias are attacking black Islamic civilians in a region called Darfur. Sudan is having a civil war where the Arab Islamic people in the north are trying to destroy the black Sudanese in the south, one religion at a time; the old divide and conquer technique.

Further research showed that over 400,000 people have been killed in Darfur and over 2.5 million people have become refugees. The U.S. and Great Britain have repeatedly asked the United Nations to send in peace keepers to stop the slaughter, but China continues to veto each request. Why would China do this? China buys Sudanese oil and the Sudan government uses approximately 80 percent of the oil money to buy Chinese military supplies, including bombers, helicopters, armored vehicles, guns and ammunition to wage this one-sided war on its own people.

There might be a way to change China's mind about supporting genocide in Sudan in exchange for oil because there is something more important than oil to them. The 2008 Summer Olympics are to be held in China, and they want the world to think they are a wonderful country. If the American people informed the Olympic corporate sponsors like Johnson & Johnson, McDonald's, Coca-Cola and General Electric that they should not advertise during the Olympics because we Americans will not be watching those Olympic commercials in protest of Chinese support of Sudanese genocide, perhaps the resulting turmoil and bad publicity would cause China to change its mind at the U.N. and allow peace keepers in Darfur.

Martin A. "Skip" Jessen

Edison