Had it been up to him, Latvia’s luge coach Martins Rubenis would have preferred to never make the trip to the Beijing Winter Olympic Games. Indeed, he didn’t know if he would even be allowed into China until the very last moment. A two-time Olympic bronze medalist, Rubenis was already known to the Latvian Chinese embassy after more than 15 years of advocacy for China’s human rights. In 2006, he staged a hunger strike in front of the site, the same year he won bronze for his country at the Torino Olympics. He was protesting the Chinese regime’s state-sanctioned organ harvesting, which targets imprisoned adherents of Falun Gong (also known as Falun Dafa), a spiritual practice Rubenis shares, which has been persecuted in China for decades. “It was not an easy feeling getting on the flight to China and knowing that people like me practicing Falun Dafa are held in …
RSS Feed | The Epoch Times