Beijing Olympics and persecution of Christians

I've posted about this over on the Sola Panel blog.

While some are free to bolt, others have been bolted behind bars.

Psst...wanna learn Engrish?

Hmm...am I allowed to make that joke? Oh well, too late.

OK, anyway, here is an article from the New Yorker about how the Chinese are trying to teach as much English to the Chinese population as they can, before the Olympics.

From the article:

Linguists estimate the number of Chinese now studying or speaking English at between two hundred million and three hundred and fifty million, a figure that’s on the order of the population of the United States.

China protests

China cops a bit of public shaming over Tibet. Hopefully plenty more where that came from.

UPDATE: David Ould appears to be keeping track of this. There are now protests in France.

Genocidal torch relay

There is a torch relay going on through places that have been victims of genocide by China.

I enjoy watching the Olympics but I'm also aware of how they are used by the host country to showcase what they would like other people to think that country is all about. In the case of China, the human rights violations are very much a part of the picture, including against my own minority—evangelical Christians. So if the Olympics are used to highlight some of these abuses, that is right and proper and has a certain poetic justice about it.