Olympic Sponsors Targeted Over China-Darfur Links

Activists are preparing to plaster college campuses with posters with charges like “McDonald’s: Proud Sponsor of the Genocide Olympics,” hoping to pressure multinational corporations sponsoring the Beijing Games into doing more about Darfur, BusinessWeek reports. Buying oil from Sudan makes China a sponsor of the region's genocide, the thinking goes, and Olympics backers like McDonald's are sponsoring the sponsors of the killing.

“None of these companies really wants to be the spouting whale that gets the harpoon from China,” said the activist group’s director. And while McDonald's did take some action on the Darfur issue, activists say it’s too juicy a target to pass up. But the company seems unconcerned, counting on its charity work to soften any blows to its image. (More Darfur stories.)