For two weeks in August 1936, Adolf Hitler's Nazi dictatorship camouflaged its racist, militaristic character while hosting the Summer Olympics. Soft-pedaling its anti-Semitic agenda and plans for territorial expansion, the regime exploited the Games to bedazzle many foreign spectators and journalists with an image of a peaceful, tolerant Germany. Having rejected a proposed boycott of the 1936 Olympics, the United States and other Western democracies missed the opportunity to take a stand that-some observers at the time claimed-might have given Hitler pause and bolstered international resistance to Nazi tyranny.

-From the online exhibit "Nazi Olympics: Berlin 1936," on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website (www.ushmm.org)

For somebody heading to a softball doubleheader, George Xu and company are likely a unique sight. But on this recent unusually brisk fall Sunday morning, the nearby diamond at Syosset-Woodbury Community Park is a ghost town, the only interlopers consisting of a few SUVs taking the wrong fork in the road on the way to youth football.

Next to a fence separating the park from Jericho Turnpike, George is one of a dozen people standing in a circle on the grass while music plays that could have come right out of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. It's a diverse bunch: Half are native Chinese, and the American-born contingent is also a mixed bag. One guy in a "New York" sweatshirt and hoodie looks like a welterweight contender prepped for his morning road work. Another is built thick and solid, as if his pastime entails lifting the occasional engine block. Casually dressed women spice up their look with gargantuan shades, often the tack for a last-minute shopping run.

Their differences quickly turn into symmetry, as the practitioners of Falun Gong-an ancient self-cultivation practice combining meditation and exercises that was taught in private before teacher Li Hongzhi took it mainstream in China in 1992-begin. It is quite the juxtaposition, flowing movements of the arms around the body combined with stances held for minutes at a time. For one first-timer, after a minute the arms go numb and it's time to take a break. But for the rest, 7 minutes of holding their hands palms in, extended just above head level, is no sweat.

A 35 mile-per-hour wind gust sends leaves from a large tree slamming into the group, who are too engrossed to care. You'd need to pay one of those softball hacks
A-Rod bucks to be out in this.

Falun Gong is dedicated, disciplined.

But militant? Subversive? George Xu says that before he started practicing, he had a bad temper-hard to believe for this diminuitive soul, who seems like Mister Rogers on a mild sedative.

George gets word from his 14-year-old daughter, Lisa, that his other daughter,
4-year-old Helen, has started crying in a nearby car, where both girls are keeping warm. First George and then wife Sunny leave the circle-Sunny in classic Mom sprint-and a minute later the parents are spinning Helen around in the parking lot with glowing smiles that seemingly raise the temperature a good 10 degrees.   

Back at the circle, as the newbie enjoys the gentility of it all, another student hands him a pamphlet that briefly touches on the practice's principles, "Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance." But then you read the back.

• Over 1,600 tortured to death

• Over 100,000 detained

• More than 25,000 sent to labor camps

• Over 1,000 forced into mental hospitals

Just reading these statistics-which are growing, by the way-is shocking enough. But George-a former professor at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, China-has for perspective the memories of June 27, 2001. Lying on a slab in the morgue was Changjun Li, a 33-year-old who had received his masters degree in computer science and practiced Falun Gong with George. Li wore only a T-shirt and shorts when George came into the room with Li's parents. There was blood under Li's nose and bruising on the left side of his face. His back and legs had black spots, as well. As his mother tried to stay strong, his father nearly collapsed in grief. Li had been held for 40 days, with Chinese officials not even bothering to offer an explanation for the incarceration or the death.

Sixteen days later, Beijing was awarded the Games of the XXIX Olympiad, with the slogan "One World, One Dream."

Who's In Charge Here?

It seems like a reasonable request: Send an e-mail to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) asking for the contact information of the person(s) in charge of tracking China's historically spotty human rights record. There has to be someone, right?

Instead, a lengthy e-mail comes back, explaining how the Olympics is a "catalyst for good." But then the statement adds, "The IOC is not in a position to monitor human rights issues."

David Kilgour says he's received numerous similar e-mails. Kilgour, a lawyer who served in Canada's Parliament from 1979 to 2006, co-authored with David Matas the 2006 report "An Independent Investigation Into Allegations of Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong Practitioners in China." The title of the Jan. 31, 2007 revised report, "Bloody Harvest," (www.organharvestinvestigation.net), leaves little to the imagination.

Many family members of killed Falun Gong practitioners have found their deceased loved ones mutilated in ways consistent with organ harvesting. And until it was taken down in April 2006, a website from an organization calling itself the China International Transplantation Network Assistance Center listed exorbitant prices for organs available to foreigners, including:

• Kidney: $62,000

• Liver: $98,000-$130,000

• Liver-kidney: $160,000-$180,000

• Kidney-pancreas: $150,000

• Lung: $150,000-$170,000

• Heart: $130,000-$160,000

• Cornea: $30,000

Kilgour says that the IOC's assertion that it isn't in the human rights monitoring business doesn't jibe with the selection process, during which China agreed to clean up its act.

"The Chinese Olympic Committee made a number of commitments to the IOC before they got the Games, and one of them was that they would improve human rights," Kilgour tells the Press. "And I think every independent observer, whether it be Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch, or Human Rights in China, or anybody who watches carefully knows, human rights have gotten significantly worse since they got the Games."

Chinese officials, Kilgour maintains, generally spin critics as people trying to politicize the Games. But he adds that there is a level of hypocrisy to that, considering that China boycotted the 1980 Summer Games in Moscow.

"Falun Gong has falsely fabricated [the story] about organ harvesting," says Wang Bao Dong, press counselor and spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C. "It is strictly prohibited by Chinese law to do such operations without inmate consent," he later adds.

But Kilgour's research convinces him of both Chinese culpability and IOC apathy.

"Frankly, the IOC made a colossal error in giving the Games to Beijing....But having given them the Games, you'd think they'd have enough, dare I say, backbone for the IOC to maybe stand up for the principles that they're supposed to be founded upon," Kilgour maintains.

"Or are they just another greedy business, to put it very bluntly?"

Bait And Switch

If the IOC's problem is greed, it apparently isn't the only one with its hand in the till. Head to YouTube and you can still see a Visa commercial featuring NBA star Yao Ming and Yogi Berra. When Yao, of the Houston Rockets, faced off against Milwaukee Bucks rookie center Yi Jianlian on Nov. 9 in Houston, an estimated 250,000,000 Chinese watched the game, and the NBA threw a viewing party in Beijing.

Top NASCAR officials traveled to Beijing and Shanghai last April to discuss potential sponsorship initiatives and television distribution. An unknowing observer could easily get the impression that with all the business and entertainment synergy between East and West, Western freedoms would be a natural progression.

Lama Surya Das would be quick to dispel that notion.

Born Jeffrey Miller in Valley Stream, he is considered one of the foremost Western Tibetan Buddhist scholars. He's a personal friend of the Dalai Lama and says that the Chinese government's restrictions of religious and other freedoms are alive and well.

But even for someone seeing the repression close up, it may be difficult to understand. The government has since 1951 recognized a Catholic Church, albeit state-sponsored, and appointed bishops not recognized by the Vatican. In a similar vein, Surya says that Tibetan reincarnate lamas can only be recognized if the Chinese government approves them.

It's an issue that has been very much in flux recently. Earlier this month, the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association appointed a bishop, the Rev. Joseph Gan Junqiu, who received Vatican approval because he expressed his loyalty to the Pope. But just weeks earlier, the Rev. Wang Zhong was given a three-year prison sentence for his participation in an underground church.

"This is not just a Buddhist issue, this [state-sponsored religion] shows that it's really a political ploy," says Surya. "But they're not really more religious. They're not really doing it in the way of the religions themselves. It's a total Communist thing to coerce a religion into the Communist Party and under their power. It's not a recognition of anything even vaguely close to separation of church and state or anything vaguely close to less restrictions. It's more restrictive, and it's totally autocratic."

Chinese law has long arms.