In a recent column about calls for boycotts of the Olympic Games in the wake of the host country's human rights violations, John Diaz, the SF Chronicle's editorial page editor, asked how Americans would feel if the traditional world games were being held in an American city.

I can assure him that I'd feel the same way I do now: Let people boycott and protest all they want.

People have a right to be upset that the Olympics are being held in Bejing this August. Given China's occupation of Tibet, its silence on the slaughter at Darfur in the Sudan (where it obtains most of its oil) and its massive civil rights violations against its own citizens (remember Tiananmen Square), human rights activists from around the world should not keep silent.

Already, disruptions have occurred at the Olympic Torch relay run in various cities, including Paris and London. A huge peaceful protest is expected tomorrow here in San Francisco, as the torch makes its only North American appearance.

Hopefully, SF officials will live up to their promise to let protesters have their say along the route of the relay as well as outside the opening and closing ceremonies. Restricting protests to so-called free speech areas away from the run, as was first proposed, will only make it appear that San Francisco has caved in to pressure from Chinese government officials who don't want the world to see how much opposition there is to their policies. Let̓s show the world that in San Francisco there is indeed freedom of speech.

All the controversy makes me wish the Olympics were being held in the U.S.

I would love it if the whole world had the opportunity to express its outrage at our country̓s terrible policies. I wish that activists in Paris and London were lining the streets as the torch passed to protest the invasion and illegal occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq. I wish the Patriot Act, the war on drugs and its incarceration of a whole generation of young black men, the lack of universal healthcare that forces seniors and others to go without much-needed treatment, and other human rights violations were being debated on a global scale.

I wish that NAFTA treaties and their devastation of the economies of poorer countries, and American corporations operating sweatshops abroad were denounced throughout the world every day from now until the end of the Games.

I have nothing to hide. Let America's dirty laundry be aired everywhere.

Of course, if the Olympics were being hosted here, President George Bush would invoke 9/11 to restrict people's right to protest. Homeland Security would work with the local cops to keep the masses from having their say or at least severely limit where and when they could do it. With the Patriot Act still in place (shame on the Democrats for allowing that), post 9/11 America would not be a good location for the Games.

It's becoming increasingly clear that not many major countries would be good to host the sporting event that goes back to ancient Greece. Even then, it was probably hard to find a government that didn't have some blemish.

No country is perfect. No government innocent.

Tommi Avicolli Mecca is a radical southern Italian queer atheist performer and writer with a website: www.avicollimecca.com