Tonight, just hours before the Olympic Games open in Beijing on Friday, PEN American Center will host “Bringing Down the Great Firewall of China: Silenced Writers Speak on the Eve of the Olympics,” an event to honor the work—and call once again for the release—of more than forty writers and journalists imprisoned by the Chinese government for expressing dissenting views.

Poets & Writers

I gotta be honest with you. I haven’t been able to figure out why Beijing was chosen as to host the Olympics. It’s polluted, both literally and figuratively. China’s record of human and civil rights violations, and illegal occupations of sovereign lands, is even worse than America’s. What’s next, Burma?

On the other hand, maybe the Olympics serve a good purpose: to drive the host country toward at least some pretense of compassionate governance and egalitarian co-existence.