Former Lost Boy of Sudan to Carry American Flag in 2008 Beijing Olympic Opening Ceremony

If you’re watching this year’s 2008 Olympic Games (NBC will broadcast from Beijing starting Friday August 8 at 7:30), be sure to look out for former Sudanese refugee and “lost boy” Lopez Lamong. A Southern Sudanese Christian who as a boy ran for his life from genocidal war that pitted the Arab Islamist government against Christians and animists in his native Sudan, Lamong is now a world-class runner and a U.S. citizen who will represent the U.S. proudly on this year’s team.

Chosen by the team captains of the entire U.S. Olympic squad, Lamong will march at the head of the U.S. delegation and has been chosen to bear the American flag.

The Olympics are of course first about sport. But cheering for this courageous young man who has chosen to live with dignity and decency after being subject to horrors at the hands of Sudan’s Islamist government is a chance to champion freedom. He has used his platform to raise awareness about the plight of the “Lost Boys”—children whose villages were brutalized by militias taking orders from Khartoum’s Islamist government. This same government sheltered bin Laden in the 1990’s and gave him land and protection to build terrorist training camps.

Lamong’s people are the Christians of Southern Sudan—over 2 million of whom were slaughtered over the course of several decades beginning as early as the 1960’s. They were brutalized at the hands of Sudan’s government long before the Darfuris, whose plight represents only the latest chapter in an ongoing effort to rape and forcibly Islamicize the people of Sudan.

Kudos to the U.S. captains for choosing Lamong as our standard bearer. This action is an eloquent protest against China’s efforts to block sanctions against its trading partner–Sudan’s Islamist government–for the ongoing slaughter of black Muslims in Darfur.

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