The 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing are creating quite a stir. And thanks to the extra scrutiny that comes with the Games of the XXIX Olympiad, the international community is finally speaking up against one of freedom’s greatest antagonists.

China, which will host the Games in August, is drawing the world’s ire for its hard line stance against protesting Tibetan monks. The skirmish is the biggest in Tibet since the late 1980s, and has led to 140 deaths according to Tibetans. With its anaconda-like grip on state news, though, China only reports 19 killings. But as unrest continues that number should grow. In fact, there are disputed reports of Chinese police killing another eight people today.

The Dalai Lama, ruler of the exiled Tibetan government in India and leader of the Tibetan monks, has led the charge against China. The usual peaceful guru has refused to call off the protests and is pushing for an international inquiry into the situation.

Amnesty International has obliged, denouncing the “excessive, sometimes lethal” force used against protestors. Echoing AI’s sentiments, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said “It’s absolutely clear that there are human rights abuses in Tibet.”

In addition to the abuses in Tibet, many are also turning red over China’s open support of the Sudanese government during the genocide in Darfur. Citing China’s involvement with Sudan, Steven Spielberg resigned in February as an artistic adviser for the Games. The heir to the British throne, Prince Charles, was caught calling China’s leaders “appalling old waxworks,” and said he would not attend the games if invited. There is even an international campaign underway to dub these Games “The Genocide Olympics.”

Who could have guessed the Olympics would rally the international community to speak out against communism, murder, and excessive government control? If the Olympics can produce this much scrutiny, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) should think about giving the Games to countries like Iran, North Korea, and Cuba.

It’s a happy International Women’s Day (IWD) for safe and free American women. But for other women across the world, it’s another day chronicling abuse, oppression and pain.

IWD inspires women to “achieve their full potential” and “celebrates the collective power of women past, present and future.” Yes, IWD has socialist roots, and CNS News quotes Eagle Forum President Phyllis Schlafly condemning it:

The radical feminists know that they can’t complain about American women because we are the most fortunate class of people who ever lived, so they search the globe for oppression in other countries using taxpayer dollars.

At least they’re searching, and they don’t have to look long.

In Afghanistan, women set themselves on fire to escape forced or abusive marriages. Up to 80 percent of women face forced marriages and two-thirds marry before the age of 16. There are no laws against domestic violence. Rape victims are punished instead of defended.

In Saudi Arabia, women are life-long dependents and may not vote, drive a car or travel by themselves. The virtue police jail women for sitting with men, and they may soon execute a woman accused of witchcraft.

In Sudan, women fear abduction, rape, police beatings and sexual slavery. Unless unmarried pregnant women can prove rape, they face execution for adultery. Some women marry rapists to avoid the social stigma.

In Basra, Iraq, fundamentalists beat, torture, maim, strangle, and behead women who violate Islamic law.

In Iran last IWD, police attacked and beat IWD participants. Buses and public spaces are gender-segregated. In court, one man’s testimony equals that of two women.

In Israel, honor killings are becoming more prevalent. Male relatives kill women for offenses like talking on a cell phone or laughing with a man.

In Congo, gang rape is a weapon of war.

Across the world (yes, in North America, too), 3 million girls are at risk for female genital mutilation each year.

International Women’s Day is a reminder that Christians have a responsibility to defend all life, including the lives of maimed and wounded women worldwide.

The Chinese government announced that it will encourage select Christian groups to distribute Bibles to athletes and visitors at the Olympics next year. The Christian groups will also be asked to act as volunteers to assist foreigners of the same religion while they are in China — this in a nation where smuggling in Bibles is still illegal.

The atheist government’s actions are in response to allegations by some foreign religious and human rights groups that said visitors would not be allowed to bring copies of the Bible or other religious items into the Olympic venue. The government said the only stipulation they set was that only one Bible be allowed per traveler.

Ye Xiaowen, head of China’s state administration for religious affairs, said China “respects and protects the religious freedom of all people.” He pointed to the Amity Foundation, an organization that has printed over 50 million Bibles, as proof that the government allows the distribution of religious texts. Amity Foundation will open the world’s largest Bible-printing factory in a few months.

An American who has worked with Christian ministries in China told WoW, “The whole thing in China is about control. … This way they can say they are meeting a need but still not allow Bibles to spread to the Chinese public.” She said since the Bibles will be given only to foreigners, the government is able to “save face” among religious groups while keeping Bibles out of the hands of their own people.

In regards to the Amity Foundation, she said they do print lots of Bibles and have increased the number of Bibles in the nation greatly, but the number per capita is still “quite low.” She also suspects the opening of the factory in the same year as the Olympics is a government publicity act as well.

Oppressed Saudi Arabian women are fighting back — literally. According to Arabic news service Asharq Al-Awsat, two Saudi Arabian women attacked members of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice after the men “politely” asked the girls to change their inappropriate clothing. The girls allegedly insulted the men, and then one girl pepper-sprayed them in the face while the other recorded the altercation on her cell phone.

Saudi Arabian women are not just fighting the virtue police. They are also fighting for the right to drive cars, BBC reported. In 1990, 47 women challenged the country’s unofficial taboo when they took their husbands’ cars out for a drive. The women were arrested and the country’s Grand Mufti issued a fatwa forbidding women drivers. The ban cannot be overruled except by another fatwa, but Fawzia al-Oyouni, a founding member of the Committee of Demanders of Women’s Right to Drive Cars, is still trying: “This is a right that has been delayed for too long.”

BBC said Saudi’s conservatives fear that letting women drive will mean letting women “mix freely with men.” Nina Shea, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, said Saudi Arabia is “far more backward in their interpretation of Islam than any other country.” Shea said according to Saudi Arabian thought, “Women create chaos. … The morality of society rests on the actions of women. Men are not expected to stop harassing women. Women are expected to sequester themselves, cloister themselves, cover themselves so men stop harassing them.”

Luo Cuifen of China went to the doctor because she saw blood in her urine. An x-ray revealed 23 needles deeply embedded in her body. Doctors say the needles were most likely placed there long ago by her grandparents, now deceased, who were trying to kill her as a child because they wanted a baby boy to take her place–and China’s one child policy wouldn’t allow both.

Steven Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute and the first American to discover and write about China’s one-child policy, told WORLD that he’d heard about such cases, but the details of this case set it apart. Of all the horrible stories coming out of China, he said, “this one is a ten, almost up there with fetal cannibalism.”

Mosher said that inserting an inch-long needle through the softspot of the scalp and into the infant’s brain is one way, along with simple abandonment, of getting rid of unwanted baby girls. This girl apparently survived that procedure, so her grandparents inserted 22 more needles in all parts of her body, making a “pincushion out of her.”

Many of the needles had worked their way into Luo’s vital organs including her lungs, liver, bladder and kidneys. Doctors hoped to remove six of the 23 needles, all of them in the woman’s abdomen, in the first of several operations, which will require twenty-three doctors from China, the U.S., and Canada, in fields ranging from women’s medicine to neurology orthopedics.

Although China’s one-child policy is often described as voluntary, Mosher said it is still a top down program. In many part of China boys are heavily favored over girls because they are bound by tradition to support their parents in their old age, and because they carry on the family name.

Infanticide and abortions of unborn girls have created a skewed ratio between the genders, with 119 boys reported born for every 100 girls, according to official figures. Mosher says the ration in some areas is as high as 121-130 boys for every 100 girls. It’s not unusual, he said, on rural playgrounds to see 25 little boys for five girls. The missing girls aren’t in orphanages or adopted into families. “They’re dead.”

With reporting from the AP

When Rosa Acuna was six weeks pregnant and deciding whether or not to have an abortion, she asked her doctor if the baby was “already there.” She said Dr. Sheldon C. Turkish told her, “Don’t be stupid, it’s only blood.”

Acuna had the abortion but now she is suing Turkish, saying he misled her about the child’s development and she has suffered “emotional distress” for the death of her unborn child. The New Jersey Supreme Court denied her case on September 12, saying that the court “will not place a duty on doctors when there is no consensus in the medical community or among the public.”

Robert P. George, professor at Princeton University and member of the President’s Council on Bioethics, served as an expert witness in an earlier stage of the case. George told WORLD on the Web, “The doctor did not tell the truth, did not tell her what is actually known as a matter of biological fact, as set forth in the leading human embryology textbooks.” Contrary to Turkish’s assertion that the baby was “only blood,” at six weeks gestation an unborn child has lungs, a beating heart, and the beginnings of a face, arms, and legs.

Acuna said she felt pressured into having the abortion, George reported: “If people claim to support the right to choose abortion, if they think it should be a matter of choice, they should be scandalized that this woman was lied to and denied the information she needed to make the choice she wished to make.”

He said the decision was not surprising, given the New Jersey Supreme Court’s liberal leanings. A similar case in a less liberal state might have different results: “It would have been a very significant case if it had come out the other way.”