Proud Sponsors of the Genocide Olympics

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Poor Adidas, Coca-Cola, General Electric, Johnson & Johnson, McDonald's, and other companies that have "coughed up tens of millions of dollars to sponsor the Olympics" in 2008. If they "ignore activists such as Darfur groups -- who have already branded next summer's Games the Genocide Olympics, in reference to what they say is China's complicity with mass killings in Sudan -- they risk angering consumers back home. But if they criticize Beijing, they could run afoul of the Chinese government and jeopardize their future in the world's most promising market." The Free Tibet Campaign's Matt Whitticase said, "You cannot ... trumpet your corporate responsibility credentials, while at the same time indulging China and refusing to criticize it." But that's exactly what the Olympics sponsors are trying to do. McDonald's says the Olympics "aren't the right forum for discussing Darfur," GE says pressuring China won't help Darfur, and Coke says it won't interfere "in the internal policy decisions of sovereign nations such as China and Sudan."