During the Atlanta Olympics, homeless people were put into temporary housing to keep them off the streets.  There was a little bit of protest, because people felt that America was posing and simply hiding the blemishes instead of curing the problem.
Imagine, then, if two million people were forcibly evicted, imprisoned and beaten if they demanded restitution.

I imagine that wouldn’t go over well.  When Beijing won their bid for the 2008 Olympics, they said it showed a new era for China, acceptance into the modern way of life, and that it would improve conditions for the Chinese people and lower human rights violations.  Two million people who have lost their homes and forty thousand who have been imprisoned and beaten for staging quiet protests would have something else to say about that. An estimated two hundred thousand are still living on the streets, unable to find temporary housing and not able to stay with family.  Two hundred thousand.  That is nearly ten times the amount of people who live in my hometown.  Imagine if the town of BumbleBee Indiana (fictional name) were to be ENTIRELY DEMOLISHED to build an Olympic stadium, the townspeople were offered no restitution or temporary housing, and were beaten for protesting?

The international community would not be silent.
I cannot tell you all how hard it was to find any reporting whatsoever on this topic.  The one Washington post article simply cited “a continuation of human rights violations” with no specifics.  All I could find were blog posts and one good article from the UK. (thank you SweetMisery for bringing this to my attention and Carol for the good link.)

I find it bitterly humorous that a celebration of the world’s unity and friendly competition would come at the price of such heinous violations of basic rights to housing, compensation and due process.  I also find it bitterly humorous that due to America’s own sketchy acknowledgment of human rights for prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, we may have no leverage for voicing our disdain.

Please, think long and hard about what it means to be human.  Think about the rights of our fellow man.  Think about what it means to be a member of the world stage.  People are people, regardless of their situation.  People have rights, because we want to have rights we need to acknowledge that these rights exist for all people.  The fact that China owns our debt shouldn’t keep the United States from speaking, and the fact that we are afraid shouldn’t be a good enough reason to violate the rights of others, even if they are possibly terrorists and enemies of ours.
Some links to more information about Beijing’s human rights violations:
2,000,000 lose homes due to Olympics
Beijing Slum Demolitions
Homes Forcibly Destroyed without Prior Warning
Demolition destroys history, a way of life