Washington, D.C. -- Rep. Neil Abercrombie and Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of California are among House members asking the Speaker Nancy Pelosi for hearings and a floor vote on a resolution calling for a U.S. boycott of the Summer Olympic Games in China.

The text of the letter follows:

Honorable Nancy Pelosi
Speaker of the House of Representatives
H-232, US Capitol
Washington, D.C. 20515

Dear Speaker Pelosi:

We are deeply concerned about the grave threat that the people of Tibet face from the brutal and unwarranted crackdown by the Beijing regime. Ever since the 1987 protests in Lhasa and the 1989 pro democracy movement in Tianenmen Square the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has mercilessly repressed political dissent and religious freedom in both China, occupied Tibet and East Turkestan.

Madam Speaker, under your leadership the Congress stood strongly by the Tibetan, Uygur and Chinese people as they bravely struggled for their rights. We cannot stand silently by and watch as another wave of brutality and oppression sweeps across the country by the Beijing regime. We should not send our athletes and officials to China as though the current crackdown on the Tibetan, Chinese and Uygur people mean nothing.

H. Res. 610 was introduced on August 3, 2007, expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the United States Government should take immediate steps to boycott the Summer Olympic Games in Beijing unless the Chinese regime stops engaging in serious human rights abuses against its citizens and stops supporting serious human rights abuses by the Governments of Sudan, Burma, and North Korea.

We therefore request that hearings be held into H. Res. 610 and that it be brought to the floor for a vote. We should not permit the totalitarian government in China to use the Olympics to cover its own evil as did Adolf Hitler in 1936.

Sincerely,

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