US makes statement in Olympic standard bearer.

Yao is carrying the flag for host China, he's one of the most famous athletes in the world, and unlike Wang Zhi Zhi, he loves representing China. In fairness to Wang, he got jerked around by the Chinese military teams early in his career and lived under a much stricter environment than Yao. Yao was the chosen face of China, and he represents the new world of international basketball superstars. Likewise, Dirk was chosen to represent Germany as the standard bearer for the German nation teams. Also an iconic figure with world wide recognition.

The US could have chosen any of it's basketball icons and people would have understood. The US teams got together to elect someone to represent America and they chose a person who has lived most of their lives in another culture. Someone who most Americans have never heard of. We chose someone who make a statement against the Chinese history of Human Rights abuses with ever having to utter a word.

The US will be represented by Lopepe "Lopez" Lomong, a recent immigrant who would have died for the opportunity to live here, and almost did. As LeBron James and friends back off of statements that they would speak out on Darfur, they elected a survivor of Darfur to represent them in China.

The background:
Sudan is a country divided by culture, ethnicity, religion, lifestyle, and now war. Oil is the most recent device to fuel the war within Sudan, and the conflict over land and culture has grown more and more desperate as outside countries enter Sudan and set up drilling companies, paying the warlords to drill in lands once occupied by ethnic minorities. China has been paying the Sudanese warlords at a discounted rate because other countries want little or nothing to do with the ethnic clashes.

China's money goes to the people who have the guns and the power, the people with guns round up the farmers and herders to either kill or enslave them. As a result of this conflict, the farmers and herders have organized militias by conscripting children and training them to be killers.

Lopez was abducted from his family and conscripted into one of these militias on a routine raid in his village. Raiding appears to be a way of life in Sudan as some are enslaved by the side with more guns and bombs and helicoptors. These people are often forced to be house servants or concubines. Often the raids are set up to simply destroy entire villages, and kill off the families that occupy the valuable lands.

Lopez is one of thousands of people who escaped Sudan and made it to the refugee camp in Kakuma, where the refugees are unwanted by their host country and constantly trying to defend themselves from attacks, disease, and starvation. He is lucky in the fact that much of his family has survived the massacre, I have met many who were not so lucky.

While most viewers will have no idea who Lopez is, he might be the most powerful political statement in these controlled olympics. His representing all of the American teams says: "China, you helped kill my village and destroy the life that I have known. I'm still striving, still working hard, still unbroken, and now I am glorified in the heart of your country."

I have given up on a military solution to stop the genocide. It has become obvious to me that the people who once said, "Seven Million, never forget, never again," were not talking about saving all people from the prospect of genocide. I really hope the US basketball team wins the gold medal and unveils "Save Darfur" t-shirts on the podium, but those players make a lot of money from the millions of NBA fans in China.

Instead of hoping that our most influential personalities will make a stand, I will have to satisfy myself in the knowledge that they picked a Sudanese man to lead them, and that has to count for something. We are represented by a man who was once a member of the poor huddled masses, a survivor who came here with nothing but the clothes on his back, and we send him out into a world that almost destroyed him with the Stars and Stripes as a true American success story.

http://sports.espn.go.com/oly/trackandfield/columns/story?id=3468567
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080807/SPORTS17/808070402/1048